Caledonia Argus

Swimming pool building gets a facelift

Posted: 6/15/04

By David Heiller
Argus News Editor

The Caledonia swimming pool building hasnít looked this good for a long time.

Thereís new blue paint on the walls with colorful designs of fish and plants. Changing rooms have matching curtains and new hooks. The floor has been painted, and even the wire baskets have been painted and sandblasted.

All thanks to Tyler Schulte of Caledonia.

Schulte, 16, organized a big facelift for the inside of the concrete block building for an Eagle Scout community service project. He is a member of Troop 51.

He and his friends and family did a thorough cleaning and painting of it this spring.

The curtains came from Target. ìHe wanted curtains that matched,î his mother, Sharon said on June 9 while taking her parents on a tour of the building. Tyler found one curtain ñ and only one ñ in the La Crosse store, so he asked his grandmother, Helen Nelson of Moorhead, to find some more.

ìShe went on a mission,î Sharon, said. ìShe found 12 of them.î

ìAt Targets in Fargo and Moorhead,î Helen added as she looked at the work her grandson had done.

ìAnd Fergus Falls,î Sharon said.

Tyler got the idea for this project from his mother. ìI came up here to look at it,î Tyler said. ìIt was pretty bad.î

One of the first ñ and toughest ñ jobs was cleaning the wooden ceiling. It was covered with toilet paper that kids had thrown on it. Tyler and four friends scraped the wood and washed it, and even removed a birdís nest.

Fellow Scouts Sam Gerardy, Lucas Nelson, and Adam Zard helped with this, as did friend Seth Danielson and Sethís mother, Rachele ìRockyî Danielson.

Rocky, who is a local painter of some reknown, served as his artistic inspiration and showed him how to do the painting. Tyler asked Brenda Welscher to paint the fish.

As you can see, Tyler received a lot of help for this job. It is a community project, Sharon explained, and community members helped.

The City of Caledonia called to have him paint the floor, so he did that too, with assistance from his sisters Tiffany and Shannon, and his parents.

Chuck Schulte, Tylerís dad, even had the metal clothes baskets sandblasted and painted. He and Tyler put in new curtain rods and hooks. Carolyn Hollatz sewed the sleeves of the curtains.

ìI like how it turned out,î Tyler said. He said that Caledonia doesnít have a lot of things for kids, and itís good to keep what the city does have nice. Heís spent plenty of time in the swimming building and pool himself, so he sees the value in it.

Now he just hopes that people who use it keep it clean. (No more toilet paper on the ceiling, please.)

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