Schiotterbock

Allphin

Schlotterbeck

Allphin

in

That is true, Mre Allphine This year docs mark a change in Red
Cross approach to the aquatic accidont prevention problem. In
order to give you a clear picturo as to why this change is taking
place it is necessary to tell you something of the origin of the Red
Cross Life Saving Service. It was at the request of the Boy Scouts
and Y.M.CeA. that Red Cross first entered the Life Saving field in
1914, At that time we were confronted with the problem of promoting
a life guarding type of program, as there were some 486 public bath-
ing facilitics in this country that wore not adequately superviscde
Life Saving technique as such was poorly understood and taught in
most of our swimming arease The Red Cross with its wide organization
and many contacts ws tho logical organization to undertake the prob-=
lem of stendardizing life saving methods and of beginning the moment-
ous task of wator-proofing America.

Our first efforts were made by setting up standards of life saving
methods and teaching the same to members of our voluntcer life saving
or life guarding societics that we organized within our local chapters
throughout the United States. After some 15 years of this effort
operators of public pools and beaches were convinced of the necessity
of obtaining professional and well trained supervision at most of our
bathing beaches. No longer was it necessary for. Red Cross Chapters
to furnish a corps of volunteers to do this work. But now we were
confronted with the rosponsibility for developing © program that
would train the masses in adequate swimming skills so that they could
more readily take care of themselves, and that would at the same time
train the more export swimmers in how to save persons in peril of
drowninge

Well, Mr, Schlotterbeck, this takes us up to about the time of
the big crash. What happened aftor that?

This mabked the beginning of a much broader educational type of
efforts More persons wore taught to swim, more oxpert swimmers
were taught how to save life by swimming rescue and by other mothodse
Signs during the past five years have positively indicated that the
time was approaching when the Red Cross in its peculiar capacity as
a great repository for information acewaulated over 25 years of ex»
periment, study, and above all, experience, should synthesize the
material at its command and put it into 4 more suitable form, to be
given to the Amorican public thru its great amay of instructors and
exominerse To this ond two new textbooks, onc on “Life Saving and
Water Safoty", and the other on " Swimming and Diving", were propared.
In them an attempt has been made to place a body of Imowledge and
aquatic skills which make of aquatic sports a skillful, pleasant and
above all a safe experience for anyone in any form of aquatic
activity that he or she might pursuce

Mre Schlotterbeck, I have boon a senior life saver of the American
Red Cross since 1922. I qualified in the test at Chautauqua, New
York, under Cantain Fred Mills, who is safoty director of the Boy
Scouts of America, and Captain Charles Scully, dircetor of First did