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The Lions designed these pools in an "L" shape, with deep water and a diving board at the short end. The longer half featured a shallow end and swimming lanes. All pools included a snack bar and required membership fees from the community to join for the season.
In the 1970s, East Petersburg, Millersville and Mount Joy all had Lions Club pools, while Willow Street had a pool run by the Jaycees, a leadership training and service organization made up of adult members. All these pools were paid for through $100 bonds that would be repaid to the buyers once the pool turned a profit. Nearly every other township in the county had a community pool, but many were privately run or operated by the community.
Now, only Millersville and Mount Joy remain under the Lions Club umbrella.
The Mount Joy Lions Club pool sits on Fairview Street in the same location since it first opened in 1967. The shallow end is 2½ feet deep with the depth increasing to 6 feet in the middle and 12 feet at the deepest point. While most of the design remains the same from the early days, there have been a few changes, according to Leonard Smith, secretary for the Mount Joy Lions Club and pool membership chair.
"We had to take out the high dive for insurance purposes, but we still have a low dive. We added a wading pool — 6 inches deep — for children with its own filter system," Smith said. An updated playground also was added.
The pool serves close to 1,500 people, and it issued 363 family passes this year. A maximum 600 passes can be issued. Though Smith has seen a slow decline in the number of people using the pool, there are enough members that it remains open to paying members only, who buy season passes to use from Memorial Day through Labor Day. The pool offers community days Tuesday and Thursday, where non-members may use it for a small fee.
Another way the Mount Joy pool differs from other area pools is its snack bar. The Cameron Estate Inn runs the vending services, while the Lions maintain it, and members can purchase a full meal there.
Lions Club members have discussed turning Mount Joy pool over to the borough, but liability and Americans with Disabilities Act requirements have made this tough."It is very hard to get liability for the pool. It is a little easier when it is privately run, but there have been many unseen problems with insurance," Smith said. "We can only do limited improvements as we are not handicapped-accessible.
"We were grandfathered in as long as the basic structure remains intact," he added.
Millersville Pool is in a different situation than Mount Joy. This pool continues to thrive in a strong community setting, and there is little talk of selling it to the borough anytime soon.
The community pool, 314 N. Prince St., near Millersville University, opened in the early 1960s and maintains its original L-shape. The only significant changes to the structure have been a new playground and a 5-foot-tall slide. The Millersville pool also had a high dive, which was removed, but it still has its low dive. The snack bar has been run by the Lions for several years, though it was previously run by a neighborhood family.
Members of the pool can bring a guest for $5, but this location has a unique agreement with the neighboring university.
"A (university) student can buy a day pass from SMAC (Student Memorial Center) and use the pool. We tend to see 100 to 200 students per year," Jack Souders, second vice president of the Millersville Lions Club, said. "One reason we have done so well maintaining the pool is we have a lot of younger members who went to the pool when they were kids and have helped take over the reins from the older members."
Millersville's membership is a little more than 400 families. Souders said these numbers have stayed fairly consistent throughout the years, with a 70 percent renewal rate.
Bill Henderson, treasurer of the branch, said staff and volunteers at the pool keep it well maintained and constantly are looking at ways to improve the grounds yet keep the costs low.
(489) (117) (48) (25) (8) (2)"We hosted our first ever Community Day this year to raise awareness of the pool and the Lions Club. We host five splash parties from 6 to 9 p.m. during the year, where we open the pool up to the rest of the community," Henderson said.
For Community Day, guests were asked to make a donation to the fire company and were able to use the pool, visit various tables set up there and sample chicken barbecue and other food.
The East Petersburg pool on Graystone Road appears to be a Lions Club facility with its "L" design, but the borough has kept the same look since buying it from the Lions in 1991 for $63,000. The pool, built in the early '60s, was originally financed through a series of A bonds. The goal of the Lions was to donate the pool and seven acres of property to the borough, but Robert Doyle, club secretary of the East Pete Lions, said this became impossible.
"We had put so much money into maintaining and repairing the pool that we needed to cover these costs," Doyle, a 24-year member of the organization, said.
"Our goal was to pay back all the bonds when the pool was paid off," Doyle said. "We sold one acre for a street hockey park and started to think about what to do with the rest in the future."
Many of the club's members were senior citizens and realized they could no longer do the needed repairs to the pool. "When the borough approached us about buying the pool, we jumped at the chance," Doyle said. "We paid back over $50,000 in bonds, but were left with about $2,000 where we were unable to find the owners."
The pool needed a lot of renovations, and the water filtration system was upgraded, but when the club's pool manager said she was leaving in two years, the Lions decided it was time to take up the borough's offer.
"We had people offering us free help, seven days a week, but it became a real financial drain," Doyle, who remembers giving his then 6-year-old daughter a paintbrush to help with repairs, said.
Many of the Lions Clubs across the country include older members, making projects such as these difficult to maintain. "It is tough for all the service organizations to get younger members these days. We were struggling, and it felt great to pay off the notes," Doyle said.
The Willow Street pool closed in 1984, when the Jaycees did not have the $30,000 needed for repairs. "We sold it and repaid everyone's $100 bond. There were only 11 people we never located, so we gave that money to the community library," Stella Dunn, membership chair for the Willow Street Lions, said.
The company that bought the property tore out the pool, filled in the void and put in a variety of businesses. This area on 272 North includes Curves, Fox's Pizza and apartments.
