Thank you, El Segundo Community, for sharing your memories and photos of The Plunge! We will be adding more stories and images and please share with your families and friends.

Have a story or photos to add? Please email Director of El Segundo Recreation, Parks, and Library Aly Mancini at amancini@elsegundo.org.

We look forward to sharing your stories and creating new memories at The Plunge!

"The MacDonalds arrived in California from Boston in the summer of 1952. Mom (Helen) spent time helping the younger girls in the changing room at The Plunge and she overheard that a job teaching children was opening up. Helen had graduated with a degree in Physical Education (PE), so this was perfect. Her girls were at Center St. School and the nursery school just down the block. So, the next year, when school started, Helen became assistant to Urho Saari.  

Helen served in this position for the next 22 years, teaching El Segundo kids how to swim. She was responsible for first through eight grade girls and first through sixth grade boys. Her daughters, Karen and Lauren, were also in the swim club for several years and hung out at all the water polo games in the early 1960s. 

In 1975,  the school board, in the midst of budget cuts, decided to cut the swimming program. Urho had retired two years previously, and Helen had already signed her contract, so she stayed one year at the middle school as a school nurse and playground supervisor and she retired at the end of the year.

Helen had been teaching three to four year old's in neighborhood pools for years and older kids in the summer and with the school program closing, she was in demand as a swimming teacher. She continued until 1999, when she and Forrest moved to Claremont.

Helen continued to teach well into her late 80s. With her Plunge career and ‘moonlighting,’ she taught thousands of children how to swim."