LEARNING TO SWIM IN THREE HOURS

"Once a person is willing to put his face in the water and do the dead man's float, learning to swim is no problem," says Mrs. Phyl Williams (left) of Glens Falls, N.Y. To make her point, Mrs. Williams, who has taught 4,000 people to swim in the last 12 years, recently commandeered Ed and Jim Bagnell, 10-year-old identical twins neither of whom could swim a stroke. Using accepted Red Cross methods at a clinic for prospective water safety instructors at Brookline, N.H., Mrs. Williams condensed a normal six-hour instruction program, and in only three hours she had the Bagnell boys swimming 50 feet with acceptable overarm technique. The Red Cross hopes eventually to teach the rudiments of swimming to the estimated 90,000,000 Americans whose swimming is still not up to safety standards.

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