Campers pondering swim-club experience

RONKS, Pa. - The happy hum of her friends' laughter enveloped Kevina Day yesterday as she stood in the middle of a Lancaster County corn maze.

But the 9-year-old wasn't smiling, and her words came fast and angry.

"We're all the same, except for the color of our skin," Kevina said. "But the lady said, 'What are these black kids doing here?' She was saying a lot of racist words."

On June 29, Kevina was among 65 mostly black and Hispanic children swimming at a private suburban pool that their Northeast Philadelphia day camp had paid to use. Kevina and others say they heard some swim club members make racial remarks and saw them escort their children from the pool.

The Valley Club in Huntingdon Valley later rescinded its contract with the camp, Creative Steps Inc., and refunded $1,950. Club officials said yesterday that they did so because the pool was so crowded as to be unsafe, not because of racism.

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission is investigating the swim club for possible racial discrimination.

The week has been a whirlwind for the city day-campers, with media requests and offers of help flooding the camp's founder, Alethea Wright. Another pool - at the Klein branch of the Jewish Community Center in Northeast Philadelphia - has opened its doors to them twice a week.

"And it's much nicer," sniffed Kevin Alce, 12. "They didn't even let us go into the deep end at that other pool."

Yesterday, as scheduled, the campers boarded a school bus and traveled 90 minutes to the Cherry Crest Adventure Farm, where they navigated the corn maze, raced pedal cars, and marveled at baby chicks.

Still, the pool incident wasn't far from the minds of the seven campers in counselor Jenelle Lucas' group.

Alce got worked up when he talked about what happened at the swim club.

"We have that paper - what's it called? That paper called the Declaration of Independence. That says they can't do that to us," said Alce.

Gerard Bird, 14, nodded emphatically.

"Who gave them the right to judge us by our race?" he said. "It's ignorance."

Shuron Davis, 11, said she heard the comments, too.

"They said, 'There's too many black people at the pool.' They were afraid we would hurt their children," Shuron said.

Some children assumed the swim club incident was an anomaly.

"Some people," Alce said, "they don't even know what they're talking about."

But other campers said they worried that what they experienced was not all that unusual. If a few people at a suburban swim club didn't like them, what else might happen?

Ryan Shepherd, 12, enjoyed himself at the farm, especially zooming around hay bales in a pedal cart. People at Cherry Crest were nice, he said, and smiled at him just as they would anyone else. "But in a Caucasian community, I don't know," he said. "You should always expect that something like this could happen."

Lucas - "Miss J" to the campers - led them through the maze, trying to keep the focus on fun. But it wasn't always easy.

"Martin Luther King fought and died for equality," said Lucas, a bubbly 19-year-old who recently graduated from Fels High School and is joining the Marines in November. "And now this? This is always going to be with these kids."

The national media glare didn't bother the campers. They like cameras, they said. And since people all around the country now know what happened, racism will get a bad name, they said.

"This is some serious stuff here," said Kevina. "I bet those people at the pool won't even be able to get a job, because everyone will know what they did."

Kevina, who just finished second grade at the Carnell School in Northeast Philadelphia, goes to school with white, Hispanic and Asian children. They're friends, she said.

So it was hard for her to understand why some people are "so mean."

She said she kept thinking about the incident, which made her mother angry. Didn't the people at the swim club know we have a black president now? she wondered.

"That lady who said the bad things is a grown woman," she said. "We're just kids."