The family of Greensboro Aquatic Center (GAC) volunteer Mike Leonard was on hand today at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex as the GAC posthumously honored Leonard with the 2nd annual T. Dianne Bellamy Small Learn to Swim Service Award.
A longtime ‘Learn to Swim’ program volunteer instructor, Leonard passed away in 2022. In his memory, the ‘Friends of Mike Leonard’ fund was created in his honor. Contributions to the ‘Friends of Mike Leonard’ fund have raised $75,885 for the GAC’s ‘Learn to Swim’ program with Guilford County Schools.
The donations made in Leonard’s honor are funding lessons for second-grade students of Sternberger Elementary School and Lindley Park Elementary School in the 2023-24 school year.
The Learn to Swim Service Award is named in honor of Guilford County Board of Education member T. Dianne Bellamy Small in recognition of her longtime support, commitment and dedicated service as a volunteer instructor for the GAC’s ‘Learn to Swim’ program. GAC Water Safety Instructor Jamie Miller was the inaugural recipient of the award in 2022.
In partnership with Guilford County Schools, the GAC’s curriculum-based ‘Learn to Swim’ healthy lifestyle program debuted in 2011 and has provided swim lessons to 12,568 local second-graders to date. Forty-six Guilford County schools are participating in the program in 2023, the highest total to date.