“Everybody can learn to swim”: A Red Cross-trained instructor’s mission to change communities and save lives

This National Minority Health Month, the American Red Cross is shining a light on one of the most preventable causes of death in the United States—drowning—and how communities are working to change it.

Drowning is preventable, and yet it is one of the leading causes of unintentional injury death among people under 30 years old.

Studies have shown that drowning outcomes in the U.S. reflect pronounced health disparities across race, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and physical setting. Children who are Black, Native American and Hispanic are at two to eight times greater risk of drowning resulting in death compared to children who are White.

This is a failure to protect — shaped by a history that denied many Americans access to pools, lessons and the chance to learn a lifesaving skill.

Water safety doesn’t rely on a single action or a single individual. It depends on a combination of protective layers:

• Close, constant supervision
• Barriers like four-sided pool fencing
• Proper use of U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets
• Swimming in lifeguarded areas — and,
• The ability to swim.

When those layers are in place, drowning is preventable. When they’re missing — when families lack access to lessons, safe pools or experienced supervision — risk multiplies quickly.

And the gap doesn’t just persist. It compounds.

When parents don’t know how to swim, their children are far less likely to learn. That pattern affects 78% of Black children, 62% of Hispanic children, and 67% of white children. The absence of swimming education doesn’t just endanger one generation — it carries forward into the next.

How a Baltimore swim club has been saving lives for generations

More than 50 years ago, Marvin Thorpe Sr. saw that gap clearly. Growing up in segregated Lynchburg, he understood that many Black families were not just excluded from pools — they were excluded from learning a skill that could save their lives.

So, he created access where it didn’t exist.

By age 20, he became Red Cross-certified in Lifeguarding and Water Safety Instruction and founded the 4M Swim Club, building a pathway into one of the most critical layers of water safety: learning to swim.

Today, that work continues through his son, Marvin Thorpe II, in Baltimore.

“Swimming is a life skill. It’s a survival skill,” he says. “Your very life can depend on it.”

Through the 4M Swim Club, he has helped thousands of people — many for the first time — gain confidence in the water. That confidence is more than comfort. It is a layer of protection.

For Ronald White, learning to swim has been life-changing. Living with multiple sclerosis, he struggles with balance and mobility on land. In the water, those limitations ease.

“It’s kind of like a treatment,” he says. “I feel much stronger when I leave here.”

His wife, Latoya, came originally to support her husband. She stayed because she realized she had never learned to swim herself — a gap she shares with millions of American adults.

Now, she’s gained more than a new skill. She’s gained confidence, safety and a layer of protection she can pass on.

“Many adults don't learn because they're afraid,” Marvin says. “Swimming lessons aren't always available or accessible, especially in urban areas.”

Building the Layers that Save Lives

Drowning prevention belongs in the national conversation during National Minority Health Month. Because this is not just about individual choices. It is about whether communities have access to the full set of protections: affordable lessons, safe places to swim, and the opportunity to build skills early in life.

A child can drown in minutes. Preventing it doesn’t require a breakthrough — it requires commitment: expanding access to swim education, reinforcing supervision, promoting life jacket use, and ensuring safer environments.

“Everybody can learn to swim,” Marvin says.

The Red Cross has spent more than 100 years working to prevent drowning. Since launching the Aquatics Centennial Campaign in 2014, the program has provided nearly 1.5 million swim lessons, trained more than 3,000 lifeguards, and operates in more than 100 communities nationwide — with a focus on areas where drowning rates exceed the national average. Learn to swim with confidence. Sign up for classes through the Red Cross Learn-to-Swim program at redcross.org/take-a-class/swimming.