"First into the Pool"

Rex Edwards, 1973.

Beverly Edwards, 1973.

FIRST INTO THE POOL

JANUARY 2012

By the time Rex Edwards had left the swimming pool and returned to the locker room after teaching his elementary P.E. class, most of the little boys had already dressed and headed back to their regular classrooms—but not Harold.

A kindergartener at the Susan B. English School in Seldovia, Harold seemed upset, so Edwards asked him what the matter was. “Somebody stole my underwear,” Harold claimed. Edwards saw a pair of underpants nearby. He gestured to the skivvies. “How do you know those aren’t yours?” he asked the boy. “These have poo in them,” Harold informed him.

A “brief” investigation subsequently revealed that, indeed, the undies had been soiled, and Edwards soon learned the identity of the culprit: The particularly “ornery” kindergartener who had done the soiling had infiltrated Harold’s locker to swap his dirty underpants for some fresher ones.

Peace, and pants, were soon restored.

Rex and his wife, Beverly, laughed as they recently recalled this incident from the early 1970s. The story reminded them fondly of the 12 years they spent in Seldovia and of the novelty back then of having a locker room in that small community. In fact, many of the little Seldovia boys and girls had never before had to change their clothes in front of anyone other than family members.

The pool at Susan B. English School in Seldovia in more recent years.

And most of the youngest children in Seldovia had never even seen a swimming pool until the new school opened its doors in the fall of 1972. The Seldovia pool was the Kenai Peninsula’s first, installed at least a year before Homer’s first pool, and nearly a decade before such a facility existed on the central peninsula.

The three-lane pool also provided the jobs that prompted the Edwardses to move to Seldovia in the first place.

Rex and Bev, now both 63, met as kindergarteners in their hometown of Wichita, Kansas. “We didn’t get serious until we were 18,” Rex said with a smile. Still serious, they both moved on to college in Colorado to study education.

Then in 1969, in the summer between his junior and senior years, Rex got his first taste of Alaska. Seeking adventure, he and a friend traveled north to Kenai, where they worked in the Columbia Ward cannery through the commercial salmon season.

A year later, after earning his degree, Rex was telephoned by then-Kenai Elementary School principal Rodger Schmidt, who needed someone to teach fifth- and sixth-grade P.E. While Bev used her Special Education degree to land a job teaching acoustically handicapped children in Wichita, Rex moved north and found temporary lodging at the parsonage of Soldotna’s Methodist minister, the Rev. Jim Fellers, and his wife Faye—both former Wichita residents.

After spending that year teaching apart, Rex and Bev were married in Kansas, and they moved into the Bay Arms apartment complex in Kenai. Rex returned to his Kenai Elementary position, while Bev worked through the March of Dimes as a speech therapist for preschool children.

In 1972, because of the opening of Kenai Junior High School and a number of staffing shifts, Rex found himself without a full-time local position, but then a new opportunity emerged. Tom Overman, principal of the new Seldovia school, called with a job offer: The school’s new swimming pool required a person with a W.S.I. (Water Safety Instructor) certificate who could teach swimming and train lifeguards.

Susan B. English School in Seldovia.

Both Rex and Bev returned to Wichita for the summer to earn their W.S.I.’s, figuring that there might be enough pool-related opportunities for both of them. After that, like Dorothy Gale, they weren’t in Kansas anymore.

On the staff at the Seldovia School were Greg and Jan Daniels, who had begun teaching there in 1969 in what Greg described as an “ancient three-story wood-sided square school, with the real-deal bell tower and functioning bell.” He said that the old building, even under the “marvelous” work of Principal Don Gilman, attracted few long-term hires. Many faculty and staff members longed for a connection to the highway system and they moved to the “mainland” as soon as jobs there became available.

After Gilman himself transferred to a principalship in Seward, Overman came in just as planning was beginning for a new school. According to Daniels, Walter Ward, the school district’s superintendent of buildings and new construction, began working with the village community to design a building that better met its needs.

Community swim kids.

“It was a beautiful meeting of the minds,” Daniels said, “and brought the educational and local community together so tightly that, in the end, the school became the center focus of nearly everything that happened in Seldovia. The number-one priority of the community was to build into the plan a swimming pool so their children and themselves could learn to swim. Being a fishing-crabbing village, many people drowned over the years, and two high school kids drowned that summer, 10 feet from shore.”

Daniels, who taught science to grades seven through 12, said that district officials did not believe they could afford to include the pool in the first phase of the building project and did not want to request that taxpayers fund it. “Politics became so thick that the school itself was in jeopardy, and finally came down to the community saying, ‘No pool, no school,’” Daniels said.

So the architect added the pool to the plans, and the funding was put on a borough-wide ballot. After lobbying from the Seldovia community and its teachers, along with “steadfast” support from Ward, Daniels said, voters passed the funding, and construction got under way.

The new building “brought tremendous solidarity to the school and community,” Daniels said. “The school became a showpiece, the principal and teaching staff installed a curriculum based on an open-classroom concept, and each and every child had an advisor that would follow their progress throughout their school years. Teacher shortage became a thing of the past.”

Rex Edwards was hired as the school’s P.E. teacher and swim instructor, and Bev was hired to teach elementary school and be a community swim instructor.

“The pool was packed, and the noise and excitement could be heard far and wide,” Daniels said. “Kids and parents no longer feared the water so much, the pride in their school was obvious, and the curriculum and expertise of the teachers brought test scores soaring. A true success story.”

*****

Taking a rare sick day from her teaching job, Bev Edwards was at home alone and feeling miserable when she began hearing what sounded like people walking around on her back porch. “I just thought I was very ill or feverish,” she said.

Sometime later, about 200 yards down the road, Bev’s husband, Rex, began walking home for lunch from the Susan B. English School.

Back inside the Edwards home, Bev continued to feel lousy, and time seemed a fuzzy concept. “Then I heard Rex banging on the door, and I kept saying, ‘I’m sick! Go around!’ I didn’t want to get up and open the door, and I thought, ‘What’s wrong with him?’”

She thought she could see someone outside the window, but she felt so addled that what she saw made no sense. Rex, meanwhile, continued to bang on the door and holler to Bev to let him in. “I thought he was really rude, seeing that I was sick,” she said.

At the school, the bell rang to start classes again, and when Mr. Edwards didn’t return from lunch, some of his students alerted Principal Overman, who hurried into the parking lot, hopped into his Jeep and roared up the road, fearful that something might be wrong.



Rex's football team, the Seldovia Retreaters, on the beach where they practiced.

Meanwhile, in her house Bev rose wearily and trudged to the window to see why Rex was causing such a ruckus. She arrived at the glass just a few moments before Overman’s Jeep zoomed into view. On the porch she saw their old washing machine. On one side of the machine was Rex—hunching, pushing and darting back and forth—and on the other side was a small black bear. “It was snapping its jaws,” Bev said, “and Rex was dodging the bear.”

The Edwards home sat on a rise just above the road, and when Overman pulled up it’s possible that he couldn’t clearly see what was taking place. He called, “What are you doing?” and Rex waved and hollered, “There’s a bear!” Then Overman waved in response and promptly turned and drove back to the school. “I think he thought Rex said, ‘I’m okay!’” said Bev, who finally let her husband into the house.

Attracted to her back porch by what Bev termed “a few cooking disasters” in her garbage, the bear hung around for another day or two, luring curious students and residents, including a woman with two German shepherds she incorrectly believed could scare off the pesky bruin. Finally, Fish & Game officers arrived to tranquilize the bear, and a fisherman named Grady was sent up the road in his Subaru to pick up the animal and relocate it out of town.

Such was life in Seldovia at times for the Edwardses, transplanted Kansans who had come to the village for very specific jobs. In truth, however, they were both jacks of all trades.

Bev's cheerleading squad.

In the 1974 yearbook for the Seldovia Otters, Rex was listed (in addition to the job for which he had been hired) as a coach for basketball, track and wrestling; he also acted as an eighth-grade advisor, trained lifeguards, and taught water-safety classes. Similarly, Bev was the sponsor for the cheerleading squad and a co-sponsor for the drill team, and she also instructed at the pool. Like other members of the school staff, they helped enthusiastically wherever they could and constantly sought new ideas.

During the 1973-74 school year, Rex introduced fencing to his students. He purchased the foils and other equipment and brought in Kenai’s Walter Ward, who had taught fencing at Kenai Peninsula Community College, to put on a demonstration with an epée.

Rex also introduced some of the older boys to the game of football. He contacted Coach Ray Tinjum at Kenai Central High School and asked to borrow some old equipment. Tinjum complied, and a large package of pads and pants, jerseys and helmets was trucked to Homer and then sent by boat over to Seldovia.

The Seldovia boys, Rex said, had no idea how to arrange the pads and get into their gear. He remembered that one boy tried to place the tailbone pad down the front of his pants to protect his gonads.



“The only place we had to play was the outside beach,” Rex said. “So I took them out there, and we were playing in the sand.” Dubbed the “Seldovia Retreaters,” the football players were photographed for the 1974 yearbook. The image depicts 11 mostly skinny teen-age boys on the gradual slope of the outer beach, most of them standing in full gridiron regalia, with the ocean behind them to the right and snow above the tide line behind them to the left.



Rex supervises fencing practice.



In the pool, Rex taught his swimmers how to do flip turns. A couple of years later when Homer was able to field its first swim team and visit Seldovia for a meet, the Otters’ flip turns gave them an advantage. “But the next time they came over, they (the Mariners) were doing them, so my edge was gone,” Rex said.

For her part, Bev remembers learning some valuable pool-related lessons about teaching as she provided community members with CPR training. In the days before “Resusci Annie” reached Seldovia, the trainees practiced on each other: “I guess I failed to say, ‘Don’t really put your mouth on your partner’s mouth,’” Bev said. “I had Judy Johnson who was down on the deck as a victim, and this other lady just went full-mouth right down on Judy. Judy’s eyes went big. And I learned to explain things better.”

Of course, not all school- and pool-related adventures were confined to Seldovia itself. Living in an isolated community required frequent, and sometimes inconvenient, travel. If Seldovia basketball teams were playing in Homer, for instance, Bev might teach all day and then catch a flight across Kachemak Bay to supervise her cheerleaders before returning home that night. “It wasn’t any big whoop,” she said. “It was just what you did.”

When Rex first joined the school district in 1970, he paid $2,500 (on $99 monthly payments) for a dark-green Volkswagen Beetle from Bill Ischi’s VW business in Soldotna. When he and Bev moved to Seldovia, he kept the car in Homer for their use on the road system—and for the use of friends or colleagues who might need a vehicle when they crossed the bay. Because of this widespread use, surprises sometimes arose.

One such surprise occurred when Rex was driving his six-man wrestling team to a meet at Service High School in Anchorage. One wrestler sat in the front passenger seat, while the other five crammed into the back, three on the seat and the other two on their laps. “It was like a clown car,” said Bev. “You didn’t worry about seat belts and liability.”

One of Rex's early Seldovia wrestling teams.

Rex did start to worry, however, when he was pulled over by an Anchorage police officer. The officer told Rex that the vehicle was “a little overloaded” but appeared ready to let them go when a wrestler named Dan Gilbert reached under the driver’s seat and extracted a .22-caliber pistol. “Is this yours?” he asked his coach.

“I’ve never seen that pistol before in my life,” Rex told the officer, who seemed unconcerned and allowed them to pile back into the vehicle and drive away. “I never found out who owned that pistol. Never did,” Rex said. “And the cop didn’t say anything. I thought I’d be in the slammer.”

“Times have changed,” Bev said.



And they continued to change for the Edwards family. After more than a decade in Seldovia, they had built a house and produced three young children, and, although they loved the community and the adventure of living across the bay, they were ready to return to the road system.

In their early years in Seldovia, they had found all the travel and isolation thrilling, but finally the “charm” of all that air and sea travel began to wear thin, Bev said, and seem more dangerous. When Kalifornsky Beach Elementary opened in the fall of 1983, she applied and was hired to become part of the first staff. She worked there until she retired in 2002, and she has been working as a Special Services aide at Skyview High School since 2005.

Yearbook testimonial about the new school

Meanwhile, health concerns kept Rex out of teaching after their return to the central peninsula. He had spent several of his Seldovia summers working on crabbing boats in Bristol Bay and the Bering Sea. After 1983, he worked mainly in construction and on a variety of other manual-labor jobs, mostly on a seasonal or part-time basis.

“It was fun,” said Rex of their time in Seldovia. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It was kind of different, unique, and innocent a little bit.”

“And the best friends,” Bev added. “I mean, we were all kind of the same age (on the staff at the school). We had to catch the ferry and plan ahead, and there was no store and no doctor. We had to order our groceries when we first got there. We’d get the Homer News and the weekly ads, and we’d go through it and call in our order. And we’d all get together and take big trips to Homer.

“We loved it. It still seems like home.”