Swimming was something that young women, growing up in Denver, just didn't do. You should understand that in my Mom’s day there were no public Swimming pools. To cool off on hot days, people went to the various lakes around the city. Typically, the boys and men would dive off docks into the cold lakes and would Swim around, and the women and girls would sun bath and wade in the shallow parts of the lake. Swimming lessons were nonexistent. The way that most people learned to swim was the “sink or swim” method: you were pushed into the water and either you made it back to the dock or someone would pull you out.  So, like many people in that generation, my mom never learned to swim.