Ronnie Polaneczky: Swim club outlook: Rough water

BEFORE YESTERDAY, it was possible to give the Valley Club a certain benefit of the doubt when trying to determine what happened when the club rescinded swimming privileges for 65 kids from Creative Steps day camp.

That's because, for days, the Huntingdon Valley club's president, John Duesler, didn't respond to countless requests to clarify what he meant when he told an NBC 10 News reporter that "there was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion" and "the atmosphere" of the club.

Did he mean that the mostly white club members didn't want Creative Steps' campers of color to alter the racial makeup of the place? Or was the word "complexion" just a terrible word choice?

Yesterday, on WHYY's "Radio Times," Duesler said, emphatically, that it was the latter.

He also said that the swimming privileges had been rescinded because the club realized, after the fact, that Valley's smallish pool couldn't safely accommodate all of the Creative Steps campers.

He then said that the board, after meeting over the weekend with the members, had voted to invite the campers back - to rescind the rescinded offer (didja follow that?).

And he hoped that the campers and their families would take them up on the offer.

But - wait. What? If Valley couldn't safely accommodate Creative Steps two weeks ago, how could it suddenly safely accommodate the campers now?

Or, as Creative Steps founder and director Alethea Wright said yesterday, "Unless there's been some additional footage added to the pool, I don't see how we could return."

Clearly, this thing is a mess. And it's about to get messier.

Yesterday afternoon, a batch of lawyers announced that a lawsuit was moving forward against the club on behalf of a family whose four children were among the Creative Steps campers. The lawyers were careful to stress that the suit might be dropped, if the other Creative Steps families decided to accept the club's invitation to return.

By early evening, though, that possibility seemed moot. At a separate news conference, held outside Creative Steps, in Oxford Circle, a different batch of lawyers - these representing Creative Steps - announced that not only would no campers return to the Valley club, but also that a federal lawsuit against the club would soon be filed on the camp's behalf.

Let the depositions begin, I guess.

For Stacey and Erik Tucker, whose 6-year-old son, Dujaun, is a camper, the notion of returning to Valley is absurd.

"I wouldn't want him to go back," said Erik Tucker. "I still think this whole thing was about race. If it was about safety, why didn't they tell that to Ms. Wright in the first place? If it's an issue that was able to be dealt with, why wouldn't they have dealt with it from the start? Why did they just give us our money back and tell us to leave, if it was something that could've been worked out?"

Camp mother Ronnette Bird agrees that the camp is playing the safety card.

"This is just another statement that makes no sense."

What has been a gift, says Wright, is how vociferously people of every color have responded supportively to the situation.

Yes, she says, her campers have been scarred by what has happened - to the point where some feel bad about their skin color, something they never felt before. She's arranging to have therapists speak to the kids about what they're feeling.

But the campers have seen, too, that good things can come from bad.

Yesterday, they enjoyed a thrilling afternoon, gratis, at Delaware Valley Gymnastics Academy, in Huntingdon Valley - just minutes from the swim club. Owner Ed Riley wanted to show the kids that people in his town cared about them.

"It was wonderful," said Wright. "Good people will help our children heal."

And lawsuits, apparently, will help ensure that no other kid will get bruised that way again. *

E-mail polaner@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2217. For recent columns:

http://go.philly.com/polaneczky. Read Ronnie's blog at http://go.philly.com/

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