Thousands of Tri-City children learned to swim in her backyard. Now Tri-Cities mourns

A Richland woman who turned her backyard into a swimming school where generations of Tri-City children learned to swim died on Monday.

Helen Chitty was 91.

She and her husband, Howard Chitty, replaced the lawn at their home with a 20-by-40-foot swimming pool in 1958 and opened Chitty’s Swimland.

“Each little child is different, and we try to figure how to teach to that child,” Helen Chitty said in Herald interview in 1999. “You have to have a mother’s touch and have compassion for children.”

Most children came to love the water, she said.

The Chittys did not advertise but had plenty of business through word of mouth. Students ranged in age from 6 months to 82.

The Chittys continued to live in the house at 1415 Judson Ave. and raised their family there, eventually putting in an outside entrance to the home’s bathroom.

“Before we put that in, we had little wet feet through the house all the time,” Helen Chitty said in a Herald interview.

The Chittys turned the business over to daughter Tamara Chitty-Marlin in about 1995. By that time, they were hearing from children that their grandparents had learned to swim in the pool.

The swimming school continues to operate as Marlin School of Swimming.

Helen Chitty turned her focus in the 1990s to a business the Chittys had begun in Chelan, Ship N’ Shore Marina and Drive Inn.

Howard Chitty, who also taught physical education at Carmichael Middle School, died in 2005.

“Mom just approached everything with an entrepreneur’s drive,” Tamara Chitty-Marlin said Monday.

Last summer, Helen Chitty spent time in her home, watching from a window as children learned to swim.

Her children had grown up in the swim school business, teaching classes. Last summer she was pleased to watch the next generation of instructors, her grandchildren, Chitty-Marlin said.

Helen Chitty’s family would like to hear the memories of former students and others who knew Helen Chitty. They can be emailed to TributeforHLChitty@gmail.com.

Columbia Memorial Funeral Chapel in Pasco is in charge of arrangements.

This story was originally published January 8, 2018 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Thousands of Tri-City children learned to swim in her backyard. Now Tri-Cities mourns."