And now, in honor of today’s re-opening of Pickett Pool, I present to you Peg Fredlund, one of my new favorite people.

I mentioned Peg in a column last week about how, back in January, budget woes forced the city’s Recreation Department to close down four of its six indoor pools. One of those pools, Pickett, was home of several swim teams, including the Polar Bears, whose members were coached by Peg, a 16-year employee of the Rec Department.

When the department laid off Peg and 17 other aquatics staffers – who staffed those four shuttered pools – she was in the midst of coaching the Polar Bears for a big meet next month at the University of Delaware.  The kids, just average swimmers, were eager to improve their skills so they’d do Pickett proud at UDel. And Peg was thrilled by their determination.

Then came the layoffs and the closings, leaving the Polar Bears with no Rec Department coach and no pool to practice in.

“I had to keep the team together,” Peg told me. “They’d been working so hard.”

So she convinced her boss at Juniata Fitness Club, where she works part time, to let the kids train in the club’s small pool on Saturday mornings, before member arrived. And that’s where she has been working with them – without pay – ever since.

“If you met these kids, you’d understand why I’m doing it,” she said. “They’re great kids.”
Peg’s commitment to the kids is a constant topic among Pickett Pool parents, says Gerald Wright, whose two daughters learned to swim under Peg’s instruction.

“She has tremendous dedication,” says Gerald, who first contacted me about Pickett demise, hoping that public attention might get the place re-opened.  (Good people in the Rec Department decided last week to re-open two of the four shuttered pools; parents are so grateful, they don’t even mind that the re-opened pools’ hours have been scaled down from six days a week to two.)

“We’re talking about how we might compensate Peg for her work, now that we’re not so focused on getting Pickett re-opened.” says Gerald. “She deserves to be paid.”

Today, when Pickett re-opens, Peg - who remains laid off - will be there coaching, for free, the kids she once coached for a paycheck.  Proving that the best civil servants are more than civil and servile.

They’re angels.