Seniors Pool Resources for Children

They sought the therapy pool after suffering from strokes, back pain and injuries that left them unable to walk.

But as the tepid water soothed their aching bones it unexpectedly warmed their hearts to children with disabilities.

Six volunteers spend two mornings each week at Easter Seal Pool, working with children whose disabilities range from Down’s syndrome and spina bifida to cerebral palsy.

While receiving physical therapy for sciatica, Lois Guptill, 60, noticed elderly people playing in the pool with severely disabled children.

“It’s nice to see grandparents bringing their grandkids to the pool,” she remembered thinking. After learning they were volunteers, she joined the group.

“I look forward to it every week,” said Guptill, a 10-year volunteer who lives in Ventura.

Paul Warner, 61, stood in waist-deep water at the pool recently holding 5-year-old Shelby Stadler, who was born with cerebral palsy. Pointing skyward, he held his finger in the water.

“Blow it out like a birthday candle,” he told Shelby, trying to get her to blow bubbles in the water.

“This is like Christmas for some of these kids,” Warner said. “They spend most of their time in wheelchairs and cannot wait to get into the pool.”

The Ventura man started volunteering 10 years ago after visiting the pool for back and neck injuries he sustained from a fall.

“It’s the look of anticipation, then the look of accomplishment on their faces that’s so satisfying,” he said.

Volunteers, who are trained by physical therapists, move the children around in the water and encourage them to kick, splash, blow bubbles and pull toys.

Stretching and developing muscles is crucial for these children who use wheelchairs and are mostly sedentary, said the pool’s director, Runda Esquillo, a physical therapist.

The volunteers are invaluable, she said.

“They provide one-on-one service to these children,” Esquillo said. “Without them we would need to hire people and train them. That would be a hardship on our facility.

“They’re true volunteers because they’re not expecting anything in return,” she added. “But what they end up getting is priceless.”

For the volunteers, seeing improvement in the children is their pot of gold.

Dennis Sullivan, 77, of Port Hueneme, recalled one boy who was petrified of the water and wouldn’t go near it. Sullivan kept splashing the boy as he sat outside the pool and dared him to splash back.

After three months, the boy overcame his fear.

Other volunteers remembered youngsters who were able to build their leg muscles by kicking in the water. Some of these children who use wheelchairs or walkers were eventually able to walk down a ramp into the pool by themselves, they said.

Guptill recounted a story about a boy believed to be deaf and blind.

Cradling the boy with his head on her shoulder, she repeatedly told him to splash the water.

Then she demonstrated by doing so herself.

He copied her movements.

“This boy is not deaf,” she told his teacher, who had him examined. It turned out the boy could hear slightly in one ear and had partial sight in one eye.

“There’s nothing more rewarding than to see that kind of thing happen,” she said.