When Reggie McBride was a child, his father took him to the neighborhood pool. The two hiked over the burning concrete to the chlorinated shoreline as the waters teemed with families and wandering children.
Then, without warning, McBride’s dad pitched him in.
“I thought maybe he was trying to kill me,” McBride recounted.
That was just how people taught their kids to swim in those days — and it worked. After much thrashing, McBride returned poolside, to his pops. Together, they walked to his grandparents’ house nearby.
Swimming was a parting gift: McBride’s father walked him home that afternoon, and they never saw each other again.
The pool where McBride learned to swim sits at the Amos Recreation Center on 16th Street, a three-part property straddling the Western edge of Temple’s Main Campus.
Named for Fletcher Amos, a municipal martyr of sorts struck and killed while helping a neighbor in car trouble, Amos Rec was once a wide-open community hub. Those involuntary swimming lessons would have taken place in vast space. Little more than Geasey Field and a flat running track stretched beside it.
But perseverance conquered parts of a space that Temple and Amos Rec had shared since the latter’s inception. Specifically, “perseverance” turned a chunk of the grassy expanse into a mini-dust bowl while building a state-of-the-art weight room—Temple ID holders only.
The playground equipment is only 11 years old. Weeds poke from the edge of Amos’ basketball court. The paint on the center shed’s exterior has paled a little in the summer sun, and McBride says students living across the street often simply chuck trash out of their windows. But the rec center’s most glaring problem is the pool — which hasn’t opened since 2019.
Local political veteran and block captain Ruth Birchett founded the Heritage Community Development Corporation to spur improvements to spots like Amos Rec. Seeing it as a safe space, Birchett pushed for a reopened pool and a computer lab in the center’s indoor area. Many in local government have supported her efforts to protect and promote the center, she said, including Parks and Rec commissioner Susan Slawson.
But earning city support can be a struggle, with Temple’s footprint wide and looming ever-larger, Birchett said.
“I have regard and respect for [Temple],” Birchett said of the university. “And it wasn’t always like this—I mean, they had people at the leadership at Temple who were very community-oriented.”
Slawson visited Amos Rec last week, the commissioner wrote in a statement to The Temple News, calling it “a vibrant recreation facility that serves all community members including Temple students.”
“The site has dedicated community members that have volunteered with recreation staff at this location for years to ensure that the youth and seniors have opportunities to participate in programming,” Slawson wrote.
Wanting to show Philadelphia’s kids a different side of law enforcement than what filled the news in the 1990s, McBride spent decades as a safety officer in the Philadelphia School District. Now, he hosts families from across the community on rec center grounds, at events he says draw local luminaries into Amos’ hallways.
Amos proved a much tougher draw to Temple’s students, McBride said — even when he tried to start a cornhole league to bring them in.
Among the students who do use the center: political science major Sam Murdoch, who was shooting around on Amos Rec’s basketball court Thursday afternoon.
“At least where I’m from—I’m gonna be honest—it’s a bunch of white people, especially old white people,” said Murdoch, who grew up near Harrisburg. He found the diversity of North Philadelphia’s cityscape refreshing, he said.
You don’t name a sheep if you see lamb chops in its future. And McBride suspects Temple’s isolation from a space just next door is born of the same ethos.
“They’re trying to take Amos from the community, because it would give them more room to build what they want to build,” McBride said.
From 1928 to 1978, Temple’s football team boasted a stadium all its own in Oak Lane. Then, it joined the NFL’s Eagles at Veterans Stadium and Lincoln Financial Field in South Philly. But school officials in the mid-2010s pushed for a second Temple Stadium, with retail space, right next to Amos Rec.
Birchett, herself a Temple alumna, rallied North Philadelphia against the plan. City Council President Darrell Clarke rejected it. Stadium talk faded as the team’s fortunes gave way to some of the worst records in college football. And Amos Rec appeared safe.
At least, for the moment.
“I think Amos could be a real asset to Temple and to the community,” McBride, a Temple dad himself, said. “But I don’t think Temple sees it like that.”
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