Left to right: Camp Corwood founder and Manistee swimming coach Corey Van Fleet with swim team members Gigi Hanson, Marina Reid and Tatum Jensen at Wile Lake in Irons.
Story and photos by Stewart A. McFerran
I learned to swim at a municipal beach on a lake in my hometown of North Muskegon. I rode my bike to summer swimming lessons provided by the local government’s parks and recreation department. I learned all the things the Red Cross teaches about water safety and swimming. Programs like this one were common in the 1970s and ’80s. Through them, lots of Michigan kids had access to low-cost water safety instruction.
Brethren residents Tim Joseph and Kathleen Lagerquist remember outdoor swimming lessons offered years ago. Joseph learned to swim at the beach in Onekama and said that when he was young, swimming lessons were offered at the public park. When she was a girl in the 1950s, Lagerquist took swimming lessons at the beach on Lake Elinor in Brethren. She still remembers her swimming instructor, Sandy Beauvais, and said Red Cross instructors gave swimming lessons at Crystal Lake in Wellston.
Many summer camps had extensive waterfront facilities and included lessons on boating safety and swimming.
Corey Van Fleet, executive director of United Way of Manistee, is a former athletic director who has coached swimmers for more than a half century. Van Fleet said that prior to the ’80s, lifeguards were present at beaches on the lakes in many small Michigan towns. It was common to also have swimming programs. But things have changed, and most public beaches are posted now with “Swim at your own risk” signs. There are no lifeguards or swimming lessons, and drownings remain high. According to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, there have been 92 drownings, plus 11 rescues with an “unknown outcome,” in the Great Lakes alone as of Sept. 11, 2022, and 39 of those were in Lake Michigan. In 2021, drownings in the Great Lakes numbered 101.
Van Fleet founded a summer camp, called Camp Corwood, (“short” for Corey’s Woods), on Wile Lake in Irons in 1962. He said he loved being the camp’s full-time director. Floating docks were built on the deep, spring-fed body of blue within the green hills. The swimming area was 25 yards long on the inside, with lane lines, just like in a pool.
“We would put buoys out, and it was 50 meters on the outside,” Van Fleet recalled. “That’s where the big kids swam.”
I recently spoke to three swimmers at Wile Lake from the swimming team at Manistee Public Schools. They were at the camp for team building with Coach Van Fleet.
“I’ve been swimming since seventh grade,” Tatum Jensen said. “I like how the team is like a family, and we are all really close to each other.”
Swimmer Marina Reid spent a year in the middle school swimming program and then did “Summer Swim” for a few years.
“That is a program that they have, where you come in and swim every day,” Reid said.
Gigi Hanson joined last year. Jensen and Reid chimed in, explaining Hanson’s role.
“She’s a diver!”
“We have some swimmers, some divers on the team.”
All this swimming and diving takes place in the pool at the Paine Aquatic Center in Manistee. I showed the young swimmers an old brochure from Camp Corwood and asked them, hypothetically, about holding swimming practice in a lake, rather than in a pool.
“It’s not chlorine.”
“It’s kinda windy!”
“I’d be definitely, like, seaweed on your feet wouldn’t be nice.”
The girls didn’t put so much as a toe into Lake Wile during their visit. After all, those docks and swimming platforms are long gone. Van Fleet explained that the insurance industry began evaluating the safety of camps in the late ’60s.
“They classified children’s camps as very dangerous,” he said.
Van Fleet recalled the night when representatives from the insurance company visited Camp Corwood. Staff members were told that changes had been made in the way risk would be assessed at camps. With that, and changes in employment law, the camp shut down. This happened across the state and the country. But swimmers still needed a place to swim.
Manistee swimmers
At the Paine Aquatic Center in Manistee, students are taught swimming and safety around water to reduce drownings. To keep young swimmers from approaching swimmers who are panicked, the Red Cross teaches, “Throw, tow, don’t go.” There have been many double drownings when untrained swimmers try to help someone in trouble in the water.
Coach Van Fleet was instrumental in the building of Manistee’s Paine Aquatic Center at the middle and high schools at 525 Twelfth Street. The teaching, recreational and competitive pool is 4,600 square feet with 8 lanes for swimming and diving, according to MunsonHealthcare.org. The 1,000-square-foot, warm-water pool is used for therapy and instruction.
“We had eight people this morning at 5:30 waiting at the swimming pool door to swim laps and to work (out) at the small pool,” Van Fleet said. “And that’s changed the culture of Manistee to a great extent because it (has) given seniors an exercise venue that’s non weight bearing, and so no matter how much you hurt, you go in the water, and you can exercise without pain.
“We’ve probably taught 10,000 kids to learn to swim, and some of them have saved somebody’s life; some, maybe, their own.
“This is our 12th year of operation,” he continued. “I’ll bet ya we’ve trained 125 lifeguards.”
But, most of all, the Paine Aquatic Center has provided a safe place for swimmers to swim.
Van Fleet said 50 swimmers just finished the summer program. Manistee schools are in a cooperative with Onekama schools and Manistee Catholic Central.
“We’ve had kids from the other schools participate and go to the state meet and score,” he said.
Benzie swimmers
Swimmers in Benzie County need a place to swim. An aquatic center would provide programming for kids who want to compete, for those of all ages who are injured and need water therapy, and for safety-around-water programs. Swimmers can swim all year in a safe environment and take the skills they learn to the open waters of the lakes and streams.
Recently, the Benzie Wellness and Aquatic Center (a group of swimming instructors and enthusiasts, currently without a home base) completed its second year of offering free swimming skills and water safety lessons to children in grades K-6 at Bellows Beach in Frankfort. Fifty children completed the sessions. With a brick-and-mortar center, those skills and lessons could be offered all year.
Van Fleet is optimistic about the prospects of building an aquatic center in Benzie County.
“I am on that committee; we will make it happen,” he said, adding that the center will be “tied to” the fitness program at Paul Oliver Memorial Hospital in Frankfort.
“In the meantime, we’ve got the ducks lined up pretty well,” he said.
Stewart A.McFerran is a lifelong swimmer. He teaches swimming at the Grand Traverse Bay YMCA. He wants to see an aquatic center built in Benzie County.
