In this sink-or-swim COVID year, the Nile Swim Club wages a heroic summer effort | Maria Panaritis

Anthony Patterson didn’t let the Nile Swim Club go under two years ago, so you’d be crazy to think he’d let the coronavirus roll around and get the best of the nation’s first Black-owned pool club this year.

Philadelphia public pools are closed. So are any number of pools across the region. But not the Nile — and that’s no small thing, considering this hallowed place in Yeadon nearly went out of business in 2018. Starting two weeks ago, the Nile is open, even though leaders were unsure they would draw enough members in the middle of a pandemic to cover expenses.

This club was born a fighter and remains a fighter — a model for us all during this most difficult year.

With hustle and help that includes a personal protective equipment subsidy from the newly formed COVID-19 Response Fund of the Foundation for Delaware County, this Little Pool That Could is open and determined to do more than just squeeze by. On Friday nights, there are poolside family movies. This weekend, the Nile is even holding a modest Fourth of July fireworks display — socially distanced, of course.

“Going to go to that field and shoot them off,” Patterson said as we talked poolside on the four-plus-acre site a few days ago. We were beneath a pavilion wedged between the pool and basketball courts whose wooden, hand-painted backboards date to the 1970s. “We’ve got some big boys in there,” he said of the fireworks stash.

The Nile’s resilience in the hands of Patterson is a marvel unto itself — even if only a more recent chapter in a two-generations-long story. Its struggle this year, however, is set against the punishing pandemic and global calls for racial justice in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by a white Minnesota police officer.

Patterson helped rescue this club of his youth from near foreclosure after a decade of failed management had resulted in unpaid taxes and a facility in disrepair. This year, he had banked on a big wave of momentum to back his early successes.

Instead came COVID-19. The costs and uncertainty associated with keeping the coronavirus from spreading has pushed many community centers into idled states. The Nile, however, decided to open for the kids — no matter the financial uncertainty.

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The children in the densely built-up suburban and city neighborhoods in and around Yeadon need this pool. Especially after months in forced COVID quarantine, and with summer camps and schools shut down due to the pandemic. The Nile draws members of diverse races, though predominantly African American, mostly from Delaware County, Philadelphia, and South Jersey.

Forging ahead amid adversity embodies the very essence of its founding members: African Americans who raised money among themselves to build this place in eastern Delaware County after they and their children had been denied access to local all-white pools.

“Our founders put up their mortgages to build this place in 1959,” Patterson said, “so we kids could swim here. They risked whatever they had to risk.

“I would risk whatever I had to risk,” he added of his decision to help save it, “to not lose this pool.”

Patterson is 56 and lives in Philadelphia. As a kid growing up in Yeadon, he lived a few blocks from the Nile and swam there with his family.

He had no idea until he returned two years ago, to scope out the club as a potential party site for his family, that this legendary oasis for the Black community was teetering on dissolution due to thousands of dollars in back taxes.

“The bathrooms were from 1959, and the pool and pool filters were from the 1970s,” he said.

A real estate professional with connections across the region, Patterson set about a rescue plan that, before the pandemic hit this year, and with help from his board, had drawn impressive results.

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He brought in contractors who gutted decades-old locker and bathroom facilities, and upgraded the pool. He joined the nonprofit’s board and helped secure a delinquent-tax payment plan to avoid foreclosure. Today, he serves as president of the club.

He secured thousands in rescue funding from two fellow Yeadon natives — his brother, Sam, and Mike Pearson, former owner of Union Packaging. Last summer, the tally of paying members grew from about 200 to more than 1,000 adults and children.

The club also won a bid to lower its tax bill from $30,000 to $20,000 — a major break given it is open for only three months a year.

Then came COVID-19.

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The board agreed to open, with strict social distancing limitations, in the hope that they would draw at least enough members to cover staff salaries. So far, 300 adults and children have signed up, and the club is adding dozens of members every few days.

It needs more.

The $7,000 grant from the foundation will help pay for touchless paper towel dispensers in bathrooms, hand sanitizer and masks, signs, and other social distancing equipment deemed essential to safety. Separately, the club had to hire extra lifeguards to enforce COVID-spacing restrictions.

“We could use donations,” Patterson said (urging readers to do so at www.nileswimclub.org). “And we’re looking for board members.”

They’ve got the grit and determination part covered. The least the rest of us can do is help keep the pool filters on, the lifeguards paid, and the kids with a place to splash and smile during this year when laughter and joy are harder to come by than ever.