the pool person The County Fair Swim Club, a neighborhood swimming pool at Maple Lane and Clare Road in East Lawrence, has been living on love for a long time. A good chunk of that love has come from Missi Pfeifer, who lives across the street from the pool, which was donated to the neighborhood by developers Bob, Bud and Al Moore in the 1960s. For the last 15 years, Pfeifer, who works full-time as a hairdresser, has overseen the annual fundraising of the $14,000 it costs to operate the pool each summer. With the help of a small group of dedicated East Lawrencians, she has also hired lifeguards and maintained and cleaned the pool throughout the summer so that neighborhood kids have an accessible and affordable place to swim. Here, Pfeifer talks about the future of the pool and what it means to the neighborhood.
It really has a hometown feel. Anyone who doesn’t live over here just doesn’t understand. I get to know 90 percent of these kids. We’re a magnet for the neighborhood. We have trailer courts on each corner, we have Edgewood, we have a lot of low-income kids, and this is the place for them to come during the summer. The joke is that we are the cheapest day care in town, at $2 per day. I’ve never raised that admission price in all these years. If money were no issue, I would continue to do this as long as I could, but I’m guessing I have two more years tops. The pool is really special and I don’t want to see it end, but I’ve been doing this almost 15 years, and trying to find someone who could put in all the time it takes would be hard. My guess is that if I drop off, it probably dies with me.
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