CORTLAND, N.Y. -- Donated to Cortland in 1946 by the Wickwire family, the pool bearing their name has served as a central meeting place each summer, for generations.
"All summer long we would just come and then after I grew up and had children my children came," local resident and Wickwire Pool Project donor Catherine Salce said. They would ride their bikes and come here and swim and now my grandchildren and we all come still as families."
"Back then there wasn't a lot of home pools so this was the pool that you came to," Cortland business owner and Wickwire Pool Project donor Joe Reagan said. "And everybody has their own little sections. The older kids were over here the bigger kids were over there so it was just a great opportunity where everybody came to one place and you always knew you'd find somebody here you knew."
Over the past decade the pool has been showing signs of age. Repairs and upgrades began as band aid fixes five years ago. All the while engineering studies pointed to the urgency of upgrading before the start of this summer.
State funding sources became available when reconstruction began last September. An outpouring of community support from more than 100 area business owners and residents, filled in the rest of the $1.2 million project.
"People that didn't have a lot would make sure that they would put a dollar or two dollars in the jar because this is part of our lives its part of our history and no one wants to see it go away," Salce said.
And those that have donated, like what they see.
"Keeping track of the progress in the last year has been kind of fun and now the end product is absolutely phenomenal," Reagan said.
Though smaller than the original, the new pool better caters to all age groups and persons with disabilities.
The public will be able to swim in the Wickwire pool following Saturday's ribbon cutting.
It will be open the next two weekends, then daily from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.