At the Lawn Aqua Club, the monthly Ladies Luncheon was in full swing under the metal canopy near the concession stand. The women ate chilled fruit salad and tepid pastas and drank iced tea and diet soft drinks. When a summer storm blew up, they quickly gathered the food and plates and moved into the clubhouse. There, the smell of chlorine mixed with the tart vinaigrette of the pasta salad, and children who’d been whisked out of the pool by lifeguards because of the rain wandered in from the locker rooms, the ends of their hair dripping onto colorful beach towels as they waited for the sun to return.
The clubhouse, 4500 W. 111th St., Oak Lawn, is an aquamarine box set low against the horizon. Its colors catch the sunlight, reflecting in shimmering, watery hues that beckon hot and sweaty bodies into the cool, clear deep of an Olympic-sized pool. The air is filled with the creak and spring of a diving board followed by a splash and the squeal of young children’s voices, while the slap-slap of wet feet running on concrete is cut short by a sharp whistle from the lifeguards.
But not just anyone with the urge to take a dip can do so at the Lawn Aqua Club. It is for members only and, on a hot summer day, when people are packed like sardines in public and park district pools, the lanes are gloriously open for a lazy backstroke across the L-shaped Aqua pool.
The Lawn Aqua Club and the Evergreen Aqua Park, 8956 S. Troy Ave., Evergreen Park, are anachronisms in today’s recreational scheme. These are not egalitarian facilities; they are clubby and familial and filled with tradition and ritual that take some time for newcomers to learn.
At Lawn Aqua, for example, swim students perfect their techniques by diving for coins thrown in the pool by instructors, and children end the season by racing to collect $100 in dimes, nickels and quarters tossed into the pool by a benevolent board of directors.
At Evergreen Aqua, a definite pecking order has emerged. Senior citizens have taken over the lap pool, and few children dare move past them, preferring instead the noise of the family-oriented “keyhole” pool next to it; keyhole, of course, referring to the shape of the pool.
Both facilities were built before pools began popping up at most suburban park districts, and they have maintained a family atmosphere that continues to attract new members.
“When I first joined, there were lots of families, big families with six, eight, 12 children,” said Kay Harris, 59, of Oak Lawn, a member of the Lawn Aqua Board of Directors. “No one had air conditioning back then. We’d all come here at night. It was a big social thing. The parents would all get together and talk, and the kids would swim until closing. Then we’d put them in their pajamas and take them home to bed.”
The Lawn Aqua Club was founded in 1961 by a group from St. Catherine of Alexandria Catholic Church in Oak Lawn. Families then and now purchase certificates entitling them to part ownership of the facility. In addition, members pay a summer assessment fee to cover repairs and improvements.
“This is one of the few pools left that operate like this,” said Harris, a member for 32 years. Because of the number of families who wanted to join, she was on a waiting list for more than a year before she purchased her certificate. Harris said the facility was constructed for 500 families, and currently 275 families belong to the club.
To join either club, families must be recommended by current members and approved by the board of directors. At Lawn Aqua, members pay the one-time ownership fee of $450 and then the annual assessment fee of $315. The Evergreen Aqua Park offers a refundable bond, as opposed to a lifetime share, for $250, plus a summer assessment fee of $150 for Evergreen Park residents and $155 for non-residents. Evergreen Park also offers a temporary summer membership for $235 per family of five.
By comparison, a family of five would pay in the range or $125 to $240 for a season pass at area park district pools.
While new members do not have to live in Oak Lawn or belong to the local parish to join Lawn Aqua, most members are from the immediate area. “I like the idea that it is so close to home,” said Nancy McNeill, of Oak Lawn, who was watching her two youngest daughters, ages 3 and 4, splash around in a foot of water in the baby pool.
“There are a lot of young families joining,” said Lawn Aqua veteran Katie Keane, 18, of Oak Lawn, a member since age 1. This is her second year working as a lifeguard. “There are a lot more young children at the pool.”
The facility features three pools: the baby pool, which reaches a depth of 18 inches; a 3-foot-deep junior pool, and the adult pool, which is 4 to 9 feet deep. Swimmers must show they can swim a lap and swim freestyle to a ladder after jumping off the diving board to earn the colored patches that entitle them to move to into the adult pool, the same requirement as at the Evergreen Aqua. “It’s a lot safer environment for everyone,” said Lawn Aqua pool manager Steve Stearns.
Stearns, who teaches physical education at Reavis High School in Burbank during the rest of the year, is equal parts camp counselor and drill sergeant. Youngsters with questions about swimming lessons or lost pool passes step shyly into his office. Troublemakers cease making trouble when he strides by, while the lifeguards all strive for a tan as deep as Stearns’ and a whistle just as sharp.
“Everyone knows everyone else, and everyone keeps an eye on things,” he said. Most of the lifeguards he hires also learned to swim at the pool, and their families have been members for years.
Lifeguard Bryan Reidy, 17, of Oak Lawn watched two young boys tussling at the edge of the pool before telling them to stop fooling around. “A lot of the kids like to joke around. I used to be those guys, so it’s a different perspective from up here,” he said. “The kids are cool. You tell them something, and they do it.”
Another lifeguard, Julie Zarod, 17, of Oak Lawn was teaching a bevy of 6-year-olds to swim. “They’re really good to work with. They try very hard,” she said, as they practiced dog-paddling and kicking while holding onto the sides of the pool. Zarod learned to swim in the same program she now teaches. “We came here every day. I started out in the baby pool,” she said.
For 15 years, Ellie Tripam of Oak Lawn has been working the front desk at Lawn Aqua. She raised eight children at the pool and knows all the tricks the youngsters use to sneak their friends in, such as tossing pool passes over the slatted fence to accomplices in the parking lot.
Tripam has noticed lots of changes over the years, especially in bathing suits. “It’s less and less and less,” she said, laughing. “But my style never changes.”
All the members call the Oak Lawn club Aqua (the same shorthand applies in Evergreen Park). It takes awhile for a newcomer to know whether they’re talking about the pool or the color. Pad down the rubber mat leading to the locker rooms and showers and bathrooms, and it’s all painted blue-green. Sandals thrown haphazardly under a bench and clothing draped on hooks are splashed against the watery hue.
At the Evergreen Aqua Park the colors aren’t quite so overwhelming. What is first noticeable is the two-story building that houses the concession stand, criss-crossed in black and white lines. Tables on the roof overlook four pools filled with more than a half-million gallons of chlorinated water. The top of a 150-foot water slide in the main pool is level with diners at the food stand, and the view from the pools is through a chain-link fence across Troy Avenue into a shady park filled with ballplayers and frisbee throwers.
“We started out much smaller than this,” said Shannon Kennedy of Evergreen Park, manager of the pool. When the facility opened in 1957, there were two pools, and the locker rooms were wooden shacks, said Barb Siebert, a longtime member.
Two more pools were added in the early 1960s, and two water slides were installed–in 1990 and ’93–making the facility three times the size of Oak Lawn’s Aqua. According to Kennedy, the pool averages 1,400 people each day and has a current membership of 1,500 families (they are chartered for up to 2,300 families).
“We’re starting to get a lot of people who’ve come back to the pool as adults with their own kids,” Kennedy said.
“There is a real rapport between staff and members. You really get to know these people,” she added. “That’s the nice thing about a membership-based organization–you get to know the patrons.”
Membership slots at both pools filled up quickly when the pools first opened, but membership declined over the years, reaching their lowest point in the early 1980s when Lawn Aqua dropped to under 200 families and Evergreen Aqua went to less than half its capacity of 2,300 families. But the numbers began to slowly increase as new and younger families moved into the suburban communities, and membership has held steady for the past five years at both pools.
The Evergreen Park pool was the brainchild of the late George Gremley, a member of an Evergreen Park organization called the Doghouse Club–an apt name since most were usually “in the doghouse” with their wives, Siebert said.
“The Doghouse Club is a fraternal club where they have meetings so they can get together and drink, to be honest. But they also do a lot of good for the community,” said Dan Disteldorf, 67, of Evergreen Park, a member of both the pool’s board of directors and the Doghouse Club.
“Gremley set up block captains who knocked on everyone’s door to get support for the pool,” he said. “We get no money from the village. We’re a self-contained not-for-profit organization.”
Rather than sell ownership certificates, patrons buy a pool bond that can be renewed annually. In addition, bondholders and temporary members (who have been recommended by a bondholder) also pay a yearly swim fee.
“There’s always something to fix,” Disteldorf said, adding that the club recently spent $576,000 for a new filtration system.
But the amenities aren’t the only draw for the pools.
A group of women sat on a bench near the lap pool, surveying their surroundings. “A whole lot of us joined because of our kids,” said Donna O’Donnell of Chicago, a member for 35 years. “Our kids outgrew the pool, but we still come here.”
June Sheridan of Chicago said the block she lived on while raising her family had nearly 100 children, and everyone belonged to the swim club. “You can’t compare this with other pools,” Sheridan said. “The others are nice, but here we have our group.”
O’Donnell and several others meet regularly at the lap pool. “I’m glad to move down to the quiet pool,” she said, smiling.
For Harris at the Lawn Aqua Club, her four sons are grown and starting families of their own. “But I’m still here. I guess it’s the camaraderie. It’s like this is my pool and this is where my friends are.”
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Two shades of aqua:
Lawn Aqua Park, 4500 W. 111th St., Oak Lawn has a membership of 275 families, enjoying facilities that include a baby pool, with a depth of 18 inches, a 3-foot-deep junior pool; and an adult pool, 4 to 9 feet deep.
Evergreen Aqua Park, 8956 S. Troy Ave., Evergreen Park, has four pools and two water slides, including a two-story high, 150-foot long water slide, to serve its membership of 1,500 families. It is approximately three times the size of the aqua.
