Many people fondly remember "Coach" Harold DeGroat and swimming lessons at Curtis Pond.

Evelyn (Weber) Watts was the first to recognize Coach DeGroat in the August 19, 2016 presentation of The Way Were Were. Pictured in that week's feature image are a dozen children stretched out in shallow water, presumably learning to kick and swim, while one man stood knee-deep, facing the group. Behind him is a woodsy shoreline covered with shrubs. Best guesses put the picture in the late 1940s, or early 50s.

Peg Forbell, a 1954 Newtown High School graduate, recalls swimming in the pond.

"It was muddy; you had to take a bath afterwards," she said. Her high school coaches "were great, and they really introduced activity to the kids. You had to be active…" She remembers both Coach DeGroat and Ann Anderson, who handled physical education, according to yearbooks from that era.

Today, Curtis Pond is visible through the trees along Berkshire Road (Route 34) across from Misty Vale Deli, and bordered on one side by private residences.

Emi Lydem thinks she is in the picture. Opening her newspaper last week, she said, "I am looking at this and I may be one of those children." Studying the photo, she said, "I am looking at the fifth girl down without a bathing cap - that may have been me; it looks like how my hair was way back when."

Recognizing her former swim teacher, she said, "We would all get in the water with legs stretched behind us and kick one, two, three and one, two, three." It was in the early 50s, she said. "I was around 7 when I took lessons there."

Coach DeGroat would "walk back and forth, up and down the line," she said, as students all kept "kicking in precision." After swimming lessons, "you picked the blood suckers off you - it was a pond, and the bottom was mucky."

A dam at the head of the pond, now concrete, faces the road. "You had to walk around the dam and the pond because that is where we stretched ourselves out and did kicking lessons and I remember there was a large tree and a rope swing," Ms Lydem said. "We all looked forward to the day when we would be old enough to jump from it."

She thinks about "all the turtles and the fish that we swam with."

During the time the photo was taken, Ms Lydem said, "That is when Newtown was like Mayberry, a fabulous place to grow up, no worries; as a kid you just got on your bike and went for the day."

Lisa Holmes said, "I saw that picture and thought, 'Oh My God,' that is the old Dickinson Pond." Whether at the former Dickinson Park pond on Elm Drive, now filled in, or the Curtis Pond, she said, "We swam with turtles and fish." Her husband Mike Holmes also sent in an e-mail regarding "one small detail" in the photo. "If you look closely at Coach's T-shirt, you will see the original Newtown Indian Logo…. We old-timers miss that…" In the 1990s, Newtown changed its team name from the Indians to the Nighthawks.

Noticing Coach DeGroat's shirt in the photo, Ms Lydem agreed, "Back then, we were the Newtown Indians… his T-shirt looks like a headdress," likely with the word Newtown under it.

A deeper meaning behind the Indian logo became clear after resident Dennis Kyle offered his memories of Coach DeGroat.

"You see the shirt he's got on?" he asked. "I played for Coach DeGroat in high school; he was a full-blooded Indian." He remembers that Coach DeGroat "coached everything" and Mrs Ann Anderson "did athletics for women." Surrounding towns' teams had mascots, but Newtown did not, he said.

"We came up with Newtown Indians" because of Coach DeGroat, Mr Kyle said. "The patch on his shirt was the logo for the high school, and we checked with tribal people in town and they were wholeheartedly for Newtown being called the Newtown Indians, which was the town's mascot beginning in the mid-40s … then someone thought it would be detrimental to have the name, and it changed."

He was "mortified," he said. "In my class, there were at least ten students with Indian blood. There were many people who were Indians, and they were disturbed that the Indians changed to the Nighthawks. But..."

Coach DeGroat "had a lot of good athletes, including myself," Mr Kyle joked. "We went to a lot of state tournaments." Coach DeGroat was a renowned athlete of his own at Springfield College, Mr Kyle said. He also immediately recognized the swim instructor when he read his August 19, 2016 print edition of

Mr Kyle took lessons from him. "I didn't know how to swim, but I know now. Every year you go to the next grade and before you know it, you had to swim across the pond on your own."

Samuel Scott also shared memories prompted by the picture. He graduated from Newtown High School when Coach DeGroat was on staff.

"I'm a '57 boy," he said. Holding his sister's yearbook on his lap, Mr Scott flipped through the brittle pages to point her out. Nancy Ann Scott had graduated in 1949.

Flipping back to page 4, Mr Scott pointed to another black and white image: "That's him there." Mr Harold S. DeGroat is standing in the top row on the right in a faculty picture. Also in that photo in the bottom row of 14 teachers is Miss Ann M. Anderson. Beside both their names is the description, "Physical Education."

Remembering taking swimming lessons with Coach DeGroat, Mr Scott said, "He would pick us all up in his station wagon." He took the children to Hawley School, then the high school, where a bus then transported them to Curtis Pond.

Looking closely at the photo from the August 19 issue of the paper, Mr Scott puts his finger on another little girl's image of the handful of children in bathing suits in Curtis Pond.

"That girl on the left, she is a Ray, but I am not sure which." Turning the yearbook's pages again, he found Gertrude Alice Ray, another of the "Ray sisters," related to the girl in the photo, he suspects.

Also remembering that Coach DeGroat was a full-blooded Indian, Mr Scott added, "All the jackets used to have an Indian smoking a cigar."

A lifelong resident, Mr Scott stopped at the newspaper office on Monday, August 22, to share his memories and spent time speaking with newspaper owner R. Scudder Smith. Mr Smith also has memories from the August 19 Way We Were picture.

Al Karchevsky drove the bus that carried children from Hawley School to the pond, he said. Also, his sister Skippy Adams was a counselor at Hawley School.

Sending a quick e-mail after reading her the paper was Maida Olson of Woodbury, who wrote, "I bet you have gotten tons of e-mails and calls about the Way We Were picture." She also has memories of Coach DeGroat.

"I took swimming lessons from Coach Harold DeGroat in the 1950s." She remembers the lessons as taking place "on the banks of a dam on Route 34. I was so bad at swimming. I was in the beginners for two summers. My sisters moved ahead fast." She said the picture looks like a beginner's lesson.

Also contacting The Newtown Bee about the August 19 picture was Roger Downs of Grand Island, Neb., and a 1964 Newtown graduate, who recognized the former coach.

Coach DeGroat arrived in Newtown in 1944 and was the town's first physical education instructor. He retired from teaching in 1963 and became the town's first Parks and Recreation director, a position he held for three years before retiring to North Carolina. He died in 1973 at age 80.