The Unholy wedding between Oconee Rec and Ga. Aquatics Center

As a last stupid vestige of the long by-gone segregation era, Oconee County has no public swimming facility. I shook my head to this ignorance in the late 1980s and early 1990s working in the John T. Brannen building of the Herman C. Michael park as redneck white kids who listen to rap music somehow thought they were keeping their KKK street cred "because I don't swim with them" meaning black people. Last time I checked the skin tone of African Americans does not wash off, even in chlorine. Morgan County has public swimming facilities (at least the city of Madison does) and so does Clarke County, but now because of a lack of swimming facility at Veterans Park (and despite an anonymous donor's attempted donation of $10,000.00 to build a pool first) we have no functioning truly public swimming facility to go with the two parks on Highway 53 along with other facilities. Oconee County does have a proliferation of private swim clubs where kids who do not even live near the pool can pay for a membership and swim all they want. I know of no instance of brown, black or yellow skin pigmented people being denied membership to any of the many teams like the perennial champion Shamrock Sharks.

Slowly a marriage of convenience has evolved between the Oconee County Recreation Department and the biggest and newest of the private facilities, and that being the Georgia Aquatics Center on New High Shoals Road at the 441 Bypass. This impressive facility has built an indoor and outdoor pool and offers year round lessons to anyone who wants them. This summer the Oconee Rec day care camp has been letting kids sign out and go over to the pool, or at least they were until some of the OCRD hierarchy seemed to have a problem with it Thursday afternoon. The day before at least some of the counselors were encouraging the parents to take their kids there after camp. My son went swimming there Thursday after his mother was getting a severe tongue lashing from one of the leaders for pulling her child out to a place where he might want to cool down on a hot summer day.

The suspension by committee of Patrick Cline a few weeks ago was further evidence of the nebulous connections between the public and private facilities after a father was exiled for protesting the suspension of his racing son and knocked an official in the pool a while back. Oconee County in general is going to have more than a little pool water on its face if it does not take steps to make this public-private wedding a little better defined in future summers. We have a big once a year county wide swim meet and the rest of the year the problem is just kind of flushed down the drain.

I am not here to indict anyone at OCRD and in general I think they do a very good job. But I do wish that we could have a real public swimming facility here in Oconee County, and I realize the time has slipped by where this would be affordable. I hope next time our leadership takes full advantage of donations for a real and much needed swimming facility, although I know $10,000.00 is a drop in the bucket of the cost of a major indoor heated facility for seniors and others (as I believe it was sold in past recreation meeting minutes). I hope whatever happens will be in the best interest of our children to afford everyone an opportunity to swim and enjoy aquatic adventures no matter what their families' income or subdivision address.