With the turn of a wheel, the Stewie the Duck Swim School pool-filling ceremony marked the realization of 35 years of work by the Leonard family to honor their late son and prevent other families from experiencing the same tragedy they once experienced.
‘I had an unfortunate thing happen just about 36 years ago where we found our son floating face down in the pool,”Stew Leonard Jr., CEO of Stew Leonard’s told a crowd gathered at the construction site across the street from the grocery store chain’s original location in Norwalk. ‘We can hardly believe it happened.”
The 21-month-old Stew Leonard III drowned in the family swimming pool in 1989. His parents, Stew and Kim Leonard Jr., subsequently launched efforts to improve swim safety for children across the country through the Stew Leonard III Water Safety Foundation, a nonprofit. They also produced a picture book and programs that featured a character named for their son to help impart the importance of basic pool safety across the country.
‘Since then, we’ve done hundreds of thousands of lessons for community organizations, we’ve raised over $6 million and tried to get the message out: Watch your kids 24/7,”said Leonard to a gathering of municipal officials, foundation and store employees, and the construction crew that will complete the facility. ‘As Kim likes to say don’t get around the pool and start looking at your phone.”
The space, formerly the Liberty Travel storefront next door to the Stew Leonard’s Wines and Spirits store at 55 Westport Ave., will feature a four-foot-deep swimming pool where instructors will provide lessons to very small children about how to float on their backs and self-rescue.
Leonard also noted he had spoken with Olympic gold medalist swimmer Rowdy Gaines about the project, who told him that even a few lessons can be lifesaving.
‘The key to it is that they don’t have to be the next Olympic swimmer, they just need to learn how to float,”Leonard added.
According to the Leonard’s foundation, 4,000 people drown in the U.S. every year, but children who take even some swim lessons are 88% less likely to drown.
Leonard also announced that profits from the lessons taught at the new facility, priced at $35 each, will go towards providing inner-city students with swimming lessons.
A ‘blow drying tunnel”featuring lights and interactive sounds is also planned as an attraction for kids, leveraging Stew Leonard’s store’s reputation for using animatronics and pressable buttons to entertain children during shopping trips.
Norwalk Mayor Harry Rilling and State Senator Bob Duff were also in attendance at the event.
‘My hat’s really off to the Leonards for taking a tragedy and turning it into something that will enhance and save lives for so many children. Not many people could do that,”Duff said.
‘As a waterfront community we know that we have the potential for people who are not able to swim to face the same tragedies,”noted Rilling. ‘With this program and with the thousands of swim lessons for young people, many for free on scholarship, it will be really important.”
