For generations of Tyler County families, summer has meant one thing, the Sistersville Pool.

Long before air conditioning, smartphones, streaming services, and FaceTime calls filled our free time, the pool was where memories were made. If you wanted to find your friends on a hot July afternoon in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s, chances are you headed straight to the pool. That’s where kids learned to swim, teenagers socialized, parents relaxed, and communities connected.

The Sistersville Pool is more than concrete, water, and lounge chairs. It is part of Tyler County history. Built in 1956 on land generously donated by the Sistersville Elks Club, the pool was truly state-of-the-art for its time. It featured an impressive 11-foot diving area with both high and low boards, underwater lights for nighttime swimming, a large shallow section where youngsters could splash and learn water safety, and even a baby pool designed especially for infants and toddlers.

Community leaders rolled up their sleeves to make it happen. Longtime Lion’s Club member Dave Miller recalls how the Sistersville Lion’s Club supported the effort by taking their famous penny pitch glassware midway game to carnivals and fairs across West Virginia to raise money for construction. It was old-fashioned community fundraising at its finest. It was neighbors working together to build something for generations of children they would never meet.

Today, community pools across America are struggling to survive. Operating costs continue to rise. Chemicals, utilities, maintenance, insurance, staffing, and repairs all carry price tags that seem to grow each year. At the same time, lifestyles have changed. Children no longer have to leave home to spend time together. With gaming systems, streaming entertainment, social media, and FaceTime, many kids can socialize without ever stepping outside their air-conditioned living rooms.

That reality creates a challenge for community pools trying to meet expenses. A pool can’t stay afloat if people don’t walk through the gate.

That’s why the work of the Sistersville Park and Pool Board deserves recognition.

This season, the board has worked tirelessly to strengthen community involvement through its Kids First Sponsor-A-Child Pool Pass Program. More than 70 season passes were donated and divided between Sistersville Elementary School and A.I. Boreman Elementary in Middlebourne. Counselors in both schools went the extra mile, carefully selecting needy students and interviewing families to ensure awarded passes would truly be used.

The hope is simple: provide deserving children with a summer filled with recreation, safety, friendship, and healthy activity, while also helping increase daily attendance numbers that support pool operations.

The board has also made affordability a priority. At just $4 admission, the Sistersville Pool remains one of the most affordable aquatic destinations in the valley. Compared with New Martinsville’s $6 daily admission and St. Marys’ $15 admittance, Sistersville offers families an exceptional bargain.

But bargains only matter if people use them.

The Park and Pool Board also extends sincere appreciation to the many community members, prior residents, churches and businesses who donated to the Kids First Campaign, to the Sistersville Momentive Plant for its generous donation of pool paint, and to the Saint Marys Correctional Facility work crew, whose volunteers completed the massive task of painting the pool in a single day. Also, to the Harry E. and Olive Barth Charitable Trust which has faithfully continued to support the pool with grant funding for upgrades to the bathhouse and replacing the bathhouse roof. Without that support, opening and operating the facility would be far more difficult, perhaps impossible.

And this season promises plenty to enjoy. From daytime aquatic exercise classes to exciting nighttime Lite-Up fundraiser parties under the summer skies, the pool is working to offer programming for all ages.

Community pools do not survive on nostalgia alone. They survive because communities decide they matter. The Sistersville Pool mattered in the 1950s when civic organizations built it. It mattered in the summers of our childhoods. And it still matters today, not only to Sistersville, but to families throughout Tyler County.

Support your pool this season. Bring the kids. Meet a friend. Swim a few laps. Attend an event.

The future of this hometown treasure depends on more than water filling the basin. It depends on us.