The Make a Splash Tour with Cullen Jones hit the Duke City this week, connecting the Olympic gold medalist with local officials and kids in an effort to stress water safety.

In just a few hours, Jones met with community leaders, offered a small swimming clinic and gave a rousing speech to hundreds of students at Tomasita Elementary.

The tour allows Jones to share lessons gleaned both as a survivor of a near-drowning incident and as an Olympic champion and the first male African-American to hold a swimming world record.

“USA Swimming approached me and said ‘We’d like for you to be a part of it,’ ” Jones said of the Make a Splash initiative. “After they put some of the drowning rates in front of me, I said ‘Wow. This is a big problem.’ My life being surrounded by swimming, it’s something I feel I can help change.”

The statistics – particularly among minorities – are troubling. A USA Swimming/University of Memphis study showed that 69 percent of African-American children and 59 percent of Hispanic kids don’t know how to swim. The number is 42 percent for Caucasians.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that approximately 10 people per day in the United States die in drowning accidents.

Olympic gold medalist Cullen Jones assists Stasia Barsun, 6, with her stream line on the edge of the Johnson Center pool. (dean hanson/journal)

Jones was almost one of them.

Before he was sharing the Olympic podium with Michael Phelps and the world-record-breaking 400-meter relay, before he etched his name into the record books with the fastest 50 freestyle by an American, Jones suffered a horrific experience at a water park at age 5. After reaching the bottom of a water slide, his innertube capsized. His mother raced down the slide behind him to try to save him. She couldn’t swim either, and Jones eventually lost consciousness. He required resuscitation.

It’s an experience Jones, now 27, has related hundreds, if not thousands, of times, and he relived the moment again at Tomasita. Complete with sound effects – a comical “aaaaahhhh” to describe the fearful yell his 6-foot-4-inch father had given during his own trip down the same waterslide – the story elicited laughs from the students seated in the school gym.

But Jones’ message is deadly serious.

He asked the kids to raise their hands if they knew how to swim. Almost all of them did. In that case, Jones said, sign your friends up for lessons through the Make a Splash program.

“You want to stop kids from drowning, right?” he asked.

Local swimming schools and teams that partner with Make a Splash can get grant money for offering free or reduced-fee lessons to kids who might not otherwise enroll.

Though there are 400 partners nationwide, Albuquerque didn’t have one until Jones’ Thursday appearance. A local club team, Duke City Aquatics, has joined the cause, according to Kim O’Shea with the USA Swimming Foundation.

A USA Swimming Foundation statement says that since 2007, Make A Splash has reached more than 889,000 children with life-saving swim lessons and hopes to surpass 1 million by 2012.

Tomasita fourth-grader Micaela Lamb just might add her name to the long list.

“I’m going to be a swimmer now,” Micaela, dressed in an oversized Make a Splash T-shirt, said as she walked out of the assembly. “But I don’t know how yet.”

Fellow fourth-grader Sandy Nguyen said she’s already taken swimming lessons but was nonetheless wowed by Jones.

“He is pretty awesome,” she said wistfully.

Jones knows he’s making a difference and related stories about an 8-year-old girl in Shreveport, La., and an 82-year-old man in Charlotte, N.C. The girl took part in one of Jones’ clinics and was utterly petrified of the water. Jones, who gave her one-on-one help after the class ended, heard she’s now in swimming lessons.

As for the man, he recently approached Jones in Charlotte, where Jones currently lives and trains. He told Jones that seeing him in the 2008 Olympics and hearing his story was an inspiration. He decided at 79 to learn how to swim.

“He said, ‘It’s all thanks to you,’ ” said Jones. “… He swims in the lane next to me now, and he talks to my coach. He’s pretty quick, too.”
— This article appeared on page D1 of the Albuquerque Journal