In doing so, they took part in a rite of passage that goes back decades, a treasured Harpswell tradition that could one day save their lives.

The Harpswell Water Safety Program has been an integral part of the community for more than 50 years. According to Mary Beth Rowe, the program’s current director, with so many livelihoods dependent on fishing, the townspeople want to make sure kids know how to swim.

The origin point of the program was Lowell’s Cove on Orr’s Island, where a group of parents volunteered their time to ensure local children could handle themselves in the water.

The program is still staffed by volunteers, although the instructors are now certified by the Red Cross, and classes now take place at the LeRoy Gleason Pool on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick.

Some instructors have been involved for more than 20 years.

“It’s definitely a long-standing commitment in the community for these people,” Rowe said.

Families pay a $20 fee to participate in the seven-week program, but the bulk of the program’s cost comes from fundraising. No children are turned away for inability to pay.

Acadia Coombs holds her nose as she jumps into the deep end of the LeRoy Greason Pool on the campus of Bowdoin College in Brunswick on May 8. Coombs and her fellow fifth graders jumped one by one into the pool wearing street clothes so they could learn techniques that could save their lives during an emergency on the water. Bisi Cameron Yee / Harpswell Anchor

The program is able to tailor lessons for children with physical or cognitive challenges. Barbara Linnehan Smith taught swimming for 51 years, retiring after running an adapted aquatics program for Maine School Administrative District 75. Her experience teaching children with physical challenges how to swim is a boon to students like 5-year-old Aggie Perry, who was born with a spinal condition that requires the use of a wheelchair.

“Swimming is 90% arms anyway,” Linnehan Smith said, referencing Aggie’s upper-body strength. “The rest just comes really easily.”

The first lessons students receive are about getting comfortable in the water, understanding buoyancy, learning that the water will support them. Before they can continue, each kindergartner must be able to float, roll over and swim to the pool wall.

“These little kids, some of them never had water in their face,” said Rowe. “We encourage them to get your face wet, get your eyes wet, ease into it and then … you see the progression and it makes you so excited as an instructor.”

Lessons build from year to year. Later classes teach proper stroke form, including the front crawl, the back crawl, and an elementary backstroke that can be maintained for long distances without using a lot of energy.

The program is set up to teach two grades per session. The fifth graders and kindergartners share the pool on Wednesdays, with the older kids in the deep end and the new swimmers in the shallow end.

Each session starts with a safety lesson. Kids learn to fit life jackets both on land and in the water because, as Rowe said, “sometimes in life you’re not wearing a life jacket when you should be and you need to know how to put it on.”

They learn the huddle position to keep a group of swimmers together. They learn elements of CPR. They learn to know their address and to identify which part of Harpswell they live in. They learn to toss a life preserver instead of entering the water to help someone in trouble, a principle known as “pitch and throw, don’t go.”

And on their very last day, the culmination of six years of lessons, the fifth graders arrive with street clothes over their bathing suits, ready to take their final plunge.

Zoey Treworgy, right, and Shannon McGuire prepare to remove a layer of clothing while partially submerged in Bowdoin College’s LeRoy Greason Pool in Brunswick on May 8. The students learned to tie off pant legs and shirt sleeves to form flotation aids to use in a water emergency. Bisi Cameron Yee / Harpswell Anchor

Instructor Julie Raines shows them how to remove their clothing in the water, how to tie off shirt sleeves and pant legs, and how to blow into collars and waistbands to create lifesaving floating devices. Then, one by one, they walk to the end of the diving board and leap into the deep end. There, they remove their saturated outer garments and tread water while they tie knots in the fabric. They take deep breaths before they duck underwater to blow air into the makeshift flotation devices. And if they do it right, they fashion water wings from long-sleeved shirts, and turn jeans into life jackets.

Linda Blanton has volunteered with the program since she was 15. She’s 71 now and has taught generations of children the importance of water safety. She likes to tell the story of a former student, a merchant mariner who was swept overboard without his life vest.

He told her later that he heard her voice, right there with him, urging him to kick his boots off, reminding him to use his clothing to save his life. He relied on the lessons he learned on his last day with the Harpswell Water Safety Program to survive in the ocean for two hours until he was rescued.

In a town with 216 miles of coastline, water safety is a critical life skill. “Kids live not more than half a mile from the water in Harpswell,” Blanton said.

In the shallow end of the pool, another longtime volunteer, Don Miskill, is teaching kindergartner Jason Stuart to float.

Jason’s body is stiff, his arms and legs rigid. Miskill supports him in the water, speaking gently, encouraging him to relax.

“Put your head back. … Look back. Look at me.” Miskill slowly lets go and Jason floats unaided on the surface of the water. Triumphant, he rolls over and splashes toward the edge of the pool. Miskill raises his arms in excitement.

“Swim! Swim! Swim!” he cries.

Bisi Cameron Yee is a freelance writer and photojournalist based in Midcoast Maine whose work has appeared in The Lincoln County News, the Bangor Daily News, the Boothbay Register, and The Maine Monitor. She holds an associate degree in photojournalism.