LEBANON COUNTY – The swimming pool at the Lieutenant Governor's residence at Fort Indiantown Gap will open to the public for the first time on Wednesday.
Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and Second Lady Gisele Fetterman are overseeing a program to teach water safety.
Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman and his family don’t live in the Lebanon County property, which has a 30-by-40-foot swimming pool that has gone mostly unused.
The Second Lady was moved to create a water safety program in part by statistics that show dire drowning fatality rates in some demographics. For example, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports 3,500 fatal water deaths in the U.S. per year, with the drowning-death rate of Black/African-American children being three times higher than that of white children.
“We want children who visit the pool to learn life-saving skills and have a great experience,” the Second Lady said. “We can have a direct role in changing those statistics. Swimming comes with a painful legacy of racial segregation. If my children can swim in that pool, so should every child in Pennsylvania.”
The Second Lady is accepting requests from nonprofits, summer camps, and organizations that serve groups that wouldn’t typically have access to a swimming pool to be guests at the Lieutenant Governor's residence pool.
Groups can be from anywhere within Pennsylvania, and they must provide their own transportation and lifeguards. Limited donated funds are available to assist with lifeguard costs.
Interested group leaders can email the Second Lady at Gisele@forgoodpgh.org.
About 50 students from Rowland Academy in Harrisburg will be the first to take swimming lessons at the pool. The first swim will take place at 12:30PM on Wednesday.
The open swim program will continue until school is back in session in the fall.