jews d

in
the

Modesty Makes A

S-P-L-A-S-H!

Oak Park pool offers
gender-separated hours.

ESTHER ALLWEISS INGBER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

POOL OPENS JUNE 9

The Oak Park Municipal Pool, 14300 Oak Park Blvd., is
holding a grand opening party, 1-6 p.m. Saturday,
June 9. The pool remains open through Aug. 26.
Information about day rates and season passes, also
open to Ferndale residents, is available at oakparkmi.gov/
recreation/oak_park_pool.php or (248) 691-7555.

16

June 7 • 2018

jn

T

he likely closing of the Jewish
Community Center’s Jimmy
Prentis Morris (JPM) branch
in Oak Park, announced in January
2015, was a low point for many resi-
dents.
Orthodox Jewish patrons in and
near Oak Park were particularly dis-
tressed about losing the JPM indoor
pool. Because of modesty practices,
most Orthodox Jews require gender-
separated swimming. The JPM pool
had offered that.
A week before the facility closed
on Aug. 31, 2015, Jewish Federation
leaders told a packed community
gathering that an “anonymous
donor” had a plan to preserve the
swimming pool while tearing down
the rest of the 59-year-old JPM
structure.
Audience members were both
relieved and excited at the prospect
of getting a brand-new, state-of-the-
art Jewish communal facility. But
their hopes were dashed. No JPM

replacement building fills the lev-
eled site on the A. Alfred Taubman
Jewish Community Campus.
This story got considerably hap-
pier when the city of Oak Park
stepped in, agreeing to provide a
special accommodation for swim-
mers using the outdoor Oak Park
Municipal Pool.
As Oak Park Mayor Marian
(Meisner) McClellan tells it, “The
number of Oak Park residents who
are Orthodox has been growing.
After my election, several of them
asked me if there could be male-
only and female-only swim times.”
Previous city recreation direc-
tors told McClellan that funds were
not available in the city budget
for new construction at the pool.
Laurie Stasiak, who took over as
recreation director in May 2016,
“was the first to figure out a way to
make gender-separate swimming
happen,” McClellan said.
Stasiak met with staff in the

city’s Department of Public Works
to determine a low-cost, flexible
way to screen off the pool, when
desired.
“We didn’t want anything
cumbersome or heavy,” said
Denise DeSantis, city director of
Community Engagement and
Public Information.
To keep swimmers from being
observed at the outside perimeter
of the pool, the city decided to
purchase screens, or “curtains,” pro-
viding 100 percent privacy, such as
those seen at construction sites.
Three pool areas in need of cur-
tain mechanisms were identified.
One large curtain was installed
on the south side of the pool,
between the main building’s locker
room and the concession building.
The total span of the 8-foot-high,
blue vinyl curtain between the
buildings is 140 feet. A 4- by 6-foot
pole secures a cable in the middle
of the span. Carabiners, little hooks
with locking clasps, are clipped on
the ends of the curtain panels. The
mechanisms allow the panels to be
pulled open or shut with the ease of
a shower curtain.
Two gates that required pri-
vacy coverage also were fitted with
removable curtains. One gate leads
to the pool from the basketball
courts and the other from the north
side of the pool to the ballfields.
Last August, with the privacy
problem solved and same-sex life-

