Swim Club

History of Beachcomber Swim Club

Most Beachcomber members don’t recognize the name Donald Ottenberg. Donald was the guiding light of Beachcomber; the originator of the idea and the purchaser of the land. Donald lived in Wynmoor, and wanted to build a swimclub on the property owned by the Stokesbury Estate, but zoning laws prohibited the building of a pool.

Along DeKalb Pike, Don found available land which was owned by Mr. Tatnell, who agreed to sell Don eleven acres of his farm. Don attended local meetings to get local approval or the swimclub.

The first picture shows Don Ottenberg and a friend surveying the site that was to become Beachcomber. First time visitors to Beachcomber often remark about the large number of mature trees on our grounds. As you can see in the photo, the original property was forested and actually had to be thinned.

Beachcomber was founded to function as a co-op—not a country club—so Beachcomber members cleared underbrush and removed the rampant poison ivy. Members who were engineers and architects did the planning, and other members dug trenches, laid pipe and everything else that was required, as it should be in a co-op.

The original parcel of land ran from the end grove to the mini-golf course; the rest of the land was acquired later. With 400 families each purchasing a $200 certificate, and $40,000 borrowed from the bank, construction on the pool started in 1956.

Sylvan Pools was contracted to build the pool, but ran into difficulty when they hit bedrock at the deep end and could not make it deep enough for diving. To compensate for this, a separate Dive Tank was built at cost the following year. Beachcomber then added three more acres to its property [the current parking lot] and afterwards purchased three additional acres. As before, all the work was done by the members of the club. John Bernheimer was very active at this time and as a result holds a lifetime free membership.