At a city pool, Miss Donna finally tests the waters

For nearly a decade of summers, Donna DeShazo - Miss Donna, as she is lovingly known - has watched over the O'Connor city pool at 26th and South Streets.

Not as a lifeguard, mind you. Because Miss Donna has always been afraid - deathly afraid - of the water.

Her fear of the deep has not prevented DeShazo, 59, from becoming a fixture at the pleasant little pool in Taney, where she cuts a strict but sweet figure. Where she greets each guest at the gate, applies almost every Band-Aid and chides every guest who tries to take a dip in a pair of jorts ("Improper swimwear, baby") or a dive ("That's dangerous, baby") into O'Connor's pristine blue waters.

But in all her summers at O'Connor - in the quiet morning hours before the gates open, when she has set up the pool and sits down to read her Bible, in the sweltering afternoons when the pool deck feels like an oven, in the peaceful evenings when she closes up and takes photos of the clouds - Miss Donna has never dipped even a toe into those waters.

Or any waters. Not since she was 11 years old.

On that summer day long ago, when a neighbor took her to the Haddington pool in West Philadelphia, she had been so excited to learn how to swim.

At first, the woman held her in the water. When she let go, Donna slipped below the water. She swallowed water. She panicked. The surface felt far.

To a child, those few moments felt like an eternity. "That day, I said never again," she said.

She married a Navy man, but even he couldn't get her in the water. She made sure he taught their three children to swim.

Nine summers ago, a friend told Donna, who works the rest of the year teaching history at the Overbook School for the Blind, about a pool manager's position at O'Connor. Donna was interested but offered one caveat: "I'm not getting in the water."

And despite never testing the waters, Miss Donna, in her firm but loving way, has become one of the people who help make city pools like O'Connor - it's open until Friday, when all city pools close - a clean, safe summer respite open to all. Unless, of course, you show up in cutoff sweatpants or try stealing poolside puffs from a vape. In that case, "Sorry, baby."

It's not just that Miss Donna is a stickler for the rules printed on the sign above her deck chair (she got her "Holy Ghost boldness" from her mother, she said). It's that she cares deeply about the pool and wants everyone to enjoy it.

"I pray for the pool," she said. "I pray for the peace of the pool and that everyone who comes through those gates is going to have an awesome time."

But no one ever thought Miss Donna would actually go into the pool.

"Not in my lifetime," said Mark Robison, 22, a lifeguard.

Sometimes, on those peaceful, quiet mornings, she'd consider it. Perhaps, just a toe. Maybe she'd just dangle her feet. Once, she made it to the ledge.

It was Zumba, of all things. The Aqua Zumba. She had tried the exercise class - the regular kind - at the school where she works, and liked it. Then, last month, she heard the pool would be hosting Aqua Zumba as part of Philly Powered, a city effort to increase neighborhood exercise programs.

Miss Donna consulted her doctor. "It'd be great," he said. "You'll really love it."

In Target, she found herself somewhere she had never before been: the bathing-suit section.

"It's going to be fine," the saleswoman said, when Donna confided in her. "I'm so proud of you."

The night before she worried: What if I miss a beat and tumble? What if I fall?

No, I'm going to do this

, she told herself again and again.

The evening Aqua Zumba class at the O'Connor pool had already started two weeks ago when Miss Donna arrived. She was running late. Her heart raced. As she changed into her new bathing suit, she prayed. God, keep me. God, don't let me fall.

She ran to the ladder and realized she did not know how to get in. So she just slid down.

Miss Donna was in the water. People in the pool did not believe what they were seeing. They stopped to applaud and cheer.

"I felt proud," Miss Donna said. And the water felt so good.

After all these summers watching over at O'Connor, Miss Donna now knew just how good it felt to be in the pool.

mnewall@phillynews.com

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