Florence Werner was 31 in the Spring of 1961 when a neighbor mentioned she’d be giving Red Cross swimming lessons that summer at Curtis Park in Miami. Did Werner know how to swim? She did. Would she be interested in teaching others? She was.

She knew all the strokes but thought she didn’t have them quite right, so instructors helped her fine-tune her style. Then she loaded her four children, ages six months to nine years, into the car along with the baby’s bassinet and drove to Curtis Pool every weekday all summer long. 

Her summer teaching extended into the fall and then became year-round. For the next 50 years, she spent her mornings and sometimes afternoons and evenings teaching swimming. Later, she moved to Bloomingdale, Ohio, her hometown, and gave lessons there for 10 years before moving back to Miami and resuming lessons, this time at the pool at A.D. Barnes Park. 

At 81, she began losing sight in one eye and couldn’t drive herself to the pool, so she retired as a Red Cross teacher. But she still gave private lessons occasionally. 

On October 9^th, Werner was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Fort Lauderdale as the winner of a Paragon Award for Recreational Swimming. Ten years earlier, the Red Cross had honored her for 50 years of service.

“Flo’s dedication to teaching swimming has touched the lives of thousands of people and has surely saved the lives of many,” the Hall of Fame said in announcing the award. “Her dedication as an American Red Cross Certified Instructor has spanned more than 50 years and has truly been extraordinary.”

Her family is proud of her. “This is a prestigious international award for her many years of dedication and work teaching swimming to both young and old alike,” her son, Michael Werner, wrote to the Red Cross. “Undoubtedly, Florence’s work has made children and adults safer around water and has saved many lives.”

Werner did not anticipate giving swimming lessons for half a century when she headed to Curtis Park that day in 1961. But she quickly found she had a knack for it, especially with beginners. Even the little ones who were afraid of the water gradually eased into it under her guidance and, she says, became enthusiastic swimmers. 

“I had kids who were crying, mothers who were upset,” she said. She told the ones who were scared not to get into the water but to sit on the side of the pool and watch the other kids. They were not to put their feet in the water but to keep them on the ledge. If the weather was cool, she relented a little and told them they’d feel better if they dipped their feet into the heated pool. Gradually they calmed down.

“Then I’d say, ‘Would you like to get in the water for just a minute?’” Cautioning that they couldn’t stay in the water for long, she told them to hold onto the side of the pool, turn their bodies around and lower themselves into the pool. Before long, the once-frightened children who had been crying and screaming were excited about learning to swim.

The mantra she taught them was “I can’t touch, but I can swim,” meaning the water was too deep for them to touch the bottom while keeping their heads above water, but that didn’t keep them from going into water over their heads. They had confidence.

There were 10 students in a class, usually four classes in a day. Every two weeks, those students would rotate out and another 10 students would rotate in all year long in Florida, although sometimes there were fewer of them when the weather was cool. Most were youngsters, but sometimes she taught adults too, some of them just as scared of the water as the little ones. She lost track of how many thousands of people she taught.

In Ohio, she taught every summer for 10 years at a sportsmen’s club in Steubenville -- and she taught the mothers too, recruiting them as instructors because otherwise, she was the only teacher. 

One day she got a call from the mother of two boys she had taught in Steubenville and who were such good swimmers that she had put them in a lifesaving class. Both had grown up and served in the military. The mother recounted a phone conversation with one of her sons after the ship he was serving on caught fire and was sinking.

The servicemen lined up to evacuate. They were going to have to jump off a deck high above the water. Most of them didn’t know how to keep from getting hurt in a jump that far. Her former student went down the line, explaining again and again how to cross their legs as they jumped, when to uncross them after they were in the water and how to kick their way to the surface.

“They just kept coming and he kept lining them up and showing them how to do it,” Werner said. “He called his mother and said, ‘I want you to call Flo and tell her she saved many a life today.’

“I was so thrilled.”

Its aquatic program is one of the oldest and largest components of the Red Cross, dating back to 1914. The organization and its partners estimate that they train more than 2 million people a year in swimming and water safety.

“Drowning is a leading cause of death for kids under the age of 5, so we always want to get the word out about the importance of swimming and water safety,” said Patrick Beason, Aquatic and Public Safety Specialist for the Red Cross in most of Florida, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Children as young as six months can get in the water with their parents in a Red Cross parent and child aquatics class. Werner’s own children were among her first students. Cindy Hinds, the youngest, says she was told she was barely a year old when she took a beginner class. “I never remember a time when I couldn’t swim,” she said. Werner has since taught all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren how to swim. 
Margaret Elsea, Werner’s oldest child, said, “I always marveled that my mom could get in that cold water. I don’t know how she did it. I think she did it out of passion.” 

“I did it because it was the right thing,” her mother responded.

“I never thought anything would come of it. I was just teaching swimming. But I’ll tell you, I loved it,” she said. “I’d be doing it today if I could drive. I know I could still teach.”

The Red Cross offers a variety of classes that are open to the public. They include swimming and water safety, CPR, first aid, babysitting and childcare, nurse assistant training and others. For more information, please visit www.redcross.org/takeaclass.

Written by Marjie Lambert, American Red Cross Public Affairs

Photos provided by Florence Werner