With TLC, Lindgate Pool Readies to Open in Kirkwood

Temperatures hovered in the 50s and a drizzle kept the crew chilly and damp, but a couple dozen volunteers turned out this past weekend to spruce up their neighborhood pool for the coming summer.

The volunteers are members of the Lindgate Manor Swim Club, the summer home for generations of Kirkwood area residents.

The workers pulled weeds, planted flowers, cleaned and scrubbed and painted, all to be ready in a few weeks for the official kickoff to summer, the opening of the pool on May 27.

“This is our main push to get ready,” said Jeff Smith, of Des Peres, who is in his first year of a two-year stint as board president of the non-profit pool on Lindgate Drive, near the border of Kirkwood and Des Peres.

Just two years ago, Lindgate – which opened in the late 1960s – was in danger of closing. The original pool needed to be replaced, but the cost was just too high.

“We were almost comatose,” volunteer  Karl Hartfelder of Kirkwood said. In fact, at its lowest point, just 80 families remained, perhaps discouraged by the cost of the repairs needed or enticed by the amenities at the new Kirkwood pool and the Des Peres Lodge.

But just in the nick of time, members pulled together the money, and last year, Lindgate started the season with a brand-new pool.

Now families are coming back, drawn by the tight-knit, old-fashioned family resort feel of the pool, with its four lanes, single diving board, kiddie pool and tiny pool house. Smith said the club now has about 130 families and has room for another 20 or so.

“Less is more here,” Smith said. “We’re not running to the lazy river or the water slide. Anywhere you sit you can see the kids in the pool. You get to know the lifeguards. Those are the things that made me want to volunteer my time as board president.”

Members are considered part owners of the pool and volunteer to keep the place running, staffing the concession stand, directing the swim team, and coordinating special events such as dive-in movies.

On Sunday, members were scrubbing down the pool deck, tables and chaises. They are proud of the family feel of the pool and love that families can bring in dinner or use the grills to barbecue hotdogs and burgers. The wall by the pool house telephone features the numbers of area pizza parlors that will deliver.

“Someone from my family is here almost every day. It’s our summer home,” said Smith, who said he meets his wife and two daughters at the pool after work almost every summer evening.

“It’s the best thing ever,” said board secretary Peggi Huffman of Frontenac, who was helping to plant bee-repelling annuals in huge clay pots. 

“It’s like being on vacation. You come up here at night with your cooler and your kids and you sit and hang out with your friends for a couple of hours.’’

At the end of the evening, she said, the kids are wiped out from swimming and ready for a good night’s sleep. “It’s a beautiful thing,” she said.

The pool has been at the center of many childhood summer memories – from learning to swim, to mastering the backstroke on the swim team to perfecting the splashiest cannonball. Huffman said members who live close by have been known to sleep in their swimming suits in order to get an early start each day.

"So many people have grown up at Lindgate pool," Hartfelder said. The pool even has its own Facebook page.

Carol Sipes, a retired Kirkwood educator, was helping plant flowering bushes around the pool on Sunday. Her two kids were on the swim team at Lindgate for many years and her family held a membership for three decades.

Now she volunteers at the spring cleanup to earn a few guest passes to bring her grandchildren to the pool in the summer.

“We feel a tie to this pool,” she said. “We’re in the neighborhood and we want it to succeed.”