For more than 80 years kids have been learning to sail, paddle, and water-ski at the Park District’s junior lifeguard summer camp at Leone Beach in Rogers Park. This past spring the Park District quietly decided to dump the boating part of the program, then stashed the kayaks, canoes, skis, boats, and other equipment in a south-side warehouse.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The junior lifeguard program was started in 1925 by Sam Leone, the Park District employee for whom the beach (which is off Touhy east of Sheridan Road) is named. He believed that all Chicago kids, including poor ones, should have access to lakefront activities, and he persuaded the Park District to offer them sailing, boating, water-skiing, and even scuba diving lessons in addition to lifeguard training. Leone died in 1965, but the day camp continued, thanks to volunteers like the 34-year-old Serb, who went there while growing up in Rogers Park and used the skills he learned to get a job as a Park District lifeguard. “There were hundreds of kids like me,” he says. “Without Leone Park we would never know how to be lifeguards or sail.”
But the Park District is hard up for cash. It wasn’t getting any money from the camp, yet it had to pay the salaries of the counselors.
When camp began in mid-June enrollment was way down. “Last year we had 450,” says Serb. “This year we have 80. People don’t like it. It’s not the old camp. You can’t just do lifesaving all day. What made the camp great is that they also did the fun stuff that really teaches kids about using the lake.”
Jessica Maxey-Faulkner, a Park District spokesman, confirms that the law department ordered the boats removed until they were certified as safe, but she says the assumption that the boats belonged to the Park District was simply an “honest mistake. The equipment was in a storage room. The storage room was cleaned out. The person clearing it out assumed it was Park District equipment.”
