The Ironic Pool Party

At the end of each July the New Orleans Recreation Department held a pool party to mark the end of the season when 14 of the city’s nineteen recreation centres closed. The end of the 1985 season was no different and there was an extra reason to celebrate as it was the first summer in living memory when there had been no drownings in the city’s pools. Indeed, around half the guests at the party were lifeguards, celebrating the feat.

When the party had ended and the four lifeguards on duty were clearing the pool, they found the body of Jerome Moody, one of the party-goers, at the bottom of the deep end of the swimming pool. Moody, who was not one, was fully clothed and had not been swimming. Despite attempts to resuscitate him, a post mortem revealed that he had died by drowning, somehow slipping into the pool unobserved.

The moral of the story is never to count your chickens until they are hatched.