GLEN RIDGE — “What a beautiful day!” assistant manager Bob Silvera said on Saturday, Aug. 29, at the Glen Ridge Community Pool. “What weather!”
He was right. A retired principal, the upcoming holiday reminds him of school.
“Glen Ridge starts the Tuesday before Labor Day weekend,” he said. “The pool will be closed Tuesday to Friday and reopen again for the weekend.”
Most of the pool managers work as teachers during the school year and Yolanda Grbic, another one, was hired this summer. Also hired was Gia White, who joined Patricia Drudy and Jodie Schnack, the head manager. With the exception of these two hires, life at the pool this year was fortunately an uneventful stretch of poolside days.
“The summer is going great,” Silvera said. “We didn’t close at all. We had one beautiful day like today, but there was lightning within 10 miles of Hurrell Field and we closed. There’s a monitor for that at Hurrell Field. Then the storm came. We didn’t lose the day because we opened up two hours later.”
Labor Day will be a big day at the pool, after four o’clock, once the pool is closed for the season.
“All the workers stay and, with the managers, there’s about 30 teenagers and we load everything into bins. Everything gets stored, except for the table stands near the pool. They’re one piece. We take off the tops.”
Pool membership was up this summer, he said. In fact, joining up had to be stopped in early July. Names were taken for a waiting list until there were openings and then admitted in batches of five. Silvera, who has been at the pool for 13 years, same as Drudy, another teacher, said it was the first time since he’s been there that membership had to be stopped. He wasn’t sure what prompted this year’s increase. He thought maybe it was the new furniture.
“It’s spiffy,” Silvera said. “People hear about it.”
With the gate closing in a few days until Memorial Day ‘27, the pool doesn’t have to be inspected until next year. It will be drained down a little to accommodate the belly of a cover stretched over it. A vendor does this.
Not until next year either is there need for any more chlorine or CO2. The pool used four or five CO2 tanks, at least three to four times a week, all summer long to maintain the water’s pH.
“We had a big chlorine delivery at the beginning of the season, one in the middle and a little one at the end of the season,” Silvera said. “We check the pH and the chlorine level every two hours. When it’s real hot, we use more chlorine.”
Even so, he said, a few times each season, the pool has to be “shocked” with more chlorine.
“We’re checked every week by the state government,” he said. “We get granulated chlorine, mix it in buckets and put it into various places in the pool to shock it.”
No more now. But Silvera will be back next year, he said, knock on wood.
“I love this job,” he said. “I’m such a nerd. I love doing paperwork and meeting people.”
Spoken like a teacher.
Photos by Daniel Jackovino
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