Five Swim and Life Lessons from My Late Father, EP 285

Hello friends, it’s Kelly. You may have noticed I’ve been away from the show for over a month—the longest break I’ve taken in more than seven years of podcasting. The reason is deeply personal: my father passed away in August at the age of 95. I’ve spent these weeks with him, with family, remembering him, celebrating his life, and navigating the bittersweet gift of grief.

In this episode, I want to honor my dad, who first taught me how to swim. Through his simple “swim to Daddy” lessons on Lake Barcroft, he gave me some of the most profound truths I’ve carried into every stage of my life as a swimmer, coach and person.

I’ll share five swim and life lessons my late father passed on to me—about courage, trust, health, joy, and resilience. My hope is that these lessons touch your life the way they’ve touched mine, whether you’re a swimmer or not.

I'm happy to be back at the mic and look forward to connecting again with you soon! 

Email us at [e-mail]. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.

Check out Kelly's Books at www.KellyPalace.com

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello friends, Welcome to the Champions Mojo
podcast, where we celebrate theextraordinary stories of adult
athletes who inspire us withtheir passion, comebacks and
stories we can all relate to andlearn from.
I'm your host, Kelly Pallas,and I want to acknowledge the
fact that I have been off frompodcasting for about a month and

(00:23):
I wanted to give everyone anupdate on that.
It's the first time in almostover seven years that we've
taken that long of a break andit comes on the heels of the
passing of my father.
He was 95.
He had a wonderful life but he,as many of my swim friends know
, he's been in and out ofhospice for the last seven years

(00:46):
and, as his only daughter, I'vespent a lot of time with my dad
over these years and then inmid-August he started to really
take a turn for the worse and hepassed away on August 24th and
we had his memorial last weekand I'm just wanting to do a

(01:06):
podcast about some of thelessons that my dad taught me.
He was the original swim lessongiver for me in my life and
there are many lessons that Ilearned from my dad, but I want
to stick with the theme of theshow and also keep this to a
rather short podcast, because ifI listed all the things I

(01:27):
learned from my dad we would behere all day.
But I do want to start off bysaying I was really lucky to
have two incredible swimmingparents.
But my mom did not know how toswim.
She had watched one of hercousins drown in front of her
when she was a young girl andshe always had a fear of the
water.
So it was my dad who kind ofstepped into the role of getting

(01:51):
me and my three brothers intoswimming, and not so much into
competitive swimming but intojust being comfortable in the
water.
We were lucky to grow up on alake.
We grew up in Lake Barcroft inFalls Church, Virginia, which
was a very gentle way to learnto swim, because the beach, the
soft sandy beach just rolledinto a very shallow area and

(02:14):
then it would just get deeperand deeper.
So I wanted to just say that mydad was an excellent swimmer.
He didn't in his youth have alot of chance to swim
competitively I guess they couldhave but he was from a small
town in Kentucky and certainlywas focused on raising his
family and working and he justdid not do swimming

(02:36):
competitively.
But he said his father would goto the local YMCA in Corbin,
Kentucky, and swim laps on hislunch hour in the summer.
So that was passed on to me ofmy grandfather was a swimmer who
liked to swim laps.
I think that went into my mind.
But I want to just share fivequick lessons that I learned

(02:59):
from my dad introducing me toswimming and then how I've
applied those to life, and Ihope that this will be something
that we can all relate to andlearn from.
So the way that I was taught toswim which has been a joke in
our home for many years,especially between my dad and I
when I was little I couldn'teven do any strokes, just the

(03:22):
dog paddle.
My dad would take me to thelake and he would say, swim to
daddy, swim to daddy.
And I would start to dog paddletowards him and he would just
continue to back up, even thoughit looked like he was just four
feet away from then.
He would back up four more feetand then I would go eight feet
and he would do this multipletimes till finally either I was

(03:43):
exhausted or he was exhausted,but I would end up in his arms
and he would say look, honey,look how far you've swum.
And he would point back to theshore and we would be for a
little tiny child I wouldimagine at this point I'm three
or four because I ended up beingable to actually do strokes,
probably at age five, and Iwould have swum 50 yards as this

(04:07):
little tiny child, and so itwas a really cool lesson in
learning that I would go fartherthan I thought that I was
capable of, and I think that wasmy big lesson that I was scared
when I was going out.
I knew I was getting into deepwater, but that courage is not
the absence of fear, it's movingthrough it, and that we can

(04:29):
always go farther than wethought we could go.
So my takeaway for that lessonis lesson one is courage over
comfort, because I probablycould have turned around at any
point and gone back to the shore, which was a little closer
originally, but sometimes liferequires us to swim past our
safe zones.

(04:50):
So the lesson two when my dadwas stepping back, he was
actually giving me someindependence, some lessons in
trusting myself and that I coulddo hard things, and that was
also trusting him, that we dohave to trust one another to be
able to do things.
We almost never in lifeaccomplish anything on our own.

(05:12):
So I learned through him that Icould trust myself, that, yeah,
I could make it to him, butthat I could also trust him that
he was going to be there for me.
And I think knowing that we dohave people that we can count on
is a huge thing.
It may not be your dad, it maybe your mom or your brother or a
friend, but knowing that inswimming and in life, that we

(05:33):
can count on our swim buddiesand our swim coaches and our
swim families, so that waslesson two for me was that you
have to have trust, but you also.
You have to have independence,but you also have to have trust.
Number three is that swimming isreally the value of health and

(05:54):
it was a family value.
I learned that from learningthat my grandfather would swim
laps at the Y on his work break,and so that is a huge thing,
that swimming is a lifelongthing.
So dad's encouragement of me tocontinue to swim he was always
incredibly proud of me when Iwas younger, certainly, and he

(06:16):
loved it when I got ascholarship to swim in college,
but he was just as proud of meas a master swimmer, that you
know, when I would come back tohim in my 30s and my 40s and my
50s and my 60s, that he wouldalways ask me it was a point of
a family value, of him askinghow's your swimming, How's swim
practice, what are you?

(06:37):
What meets, do you have comingup?
It was a language of health andfitness and that was a lesson
that he planted early in me andthe ripple effect just goes
forward through generations.
Swimming is a generational giftMovement, health, self-care all
generational gifts.
So that was lesson three.

(06:57):
Lesson four that there was a lotof playfulness in swimming,
that my dad taught me, and joyand in life.
My dad was known for his senseof humor.
He was always playing jokes.
At the end of his life he wouldsay he suffered a lot, he was
bedbound a lot, he was in awheelchair for a lot of his life
, he couldn't walk towards theend and he would say that he

(07:20):
endured with courage, sufferedwith dignity and prevailed with
a sense of laughter.
And that, of course, is alesson all its own, but I do
just remember him.
The artwork for this podcast isa young swim girl being thrown
out of her dad's arms in a divein the water and I wish I had

(07:41):
that exact picture of my dad andI from that young age.
But I used a beautiful replicaof what my dad did with me in
the lake so many times that Iwould launch off his shoulders
and learn to dive off hisshoulders into a lake.
We played, we laughed, wesplashed, we canoed with my
three brothers and it was justsomething.

(08:02):
That swimming wasn't just aboutgrit, it was about fun and
connection, and I still feelthat today and I think when we
can keep that joyfulness andplayfulness in swimming, it's
just a beautiful part of it.
Whether you're going forrecords or you're just going to
swim practice, it's still just,it's play, it's fun.

(08:22):
So that was lesson four.
Lesson five and the last lessonis goes ties a little bit back
to number one, but that we canalways go farther than we think.
It's just.
That was something that my dadtaught me in the last years of
his life was he said he neverwanted to be in a wheelchair, he

(08:44):
never wanted to be bed bound,he never wanted to be
incapacitated like he was for solong, but he just, he went
through it, he went farther thanhe thought he could and living
to be 95 in a really toughcondition.
But he did it, he endured it,he went farther than he thought

(09:04):
he could and I think we canalways all go farther than we
think.
We have this capability thatwe're always capable of more
than we actually believe we arecapable of.
I think that's beautiful.
And just to close out here andbring it back to my dad, I'm
just so grateful that he gave methis love of the water and

(09:25):
these lessons and the legacy andI will end on a little bit
upbeat note here, this funnylittle joke that my dad told
it's a classic swim parentexchange with somebody, and
maybe those of you who've neverdone a summer league swim meet
where there are just hundreds ofkids and lots of parents

(09:45):
volunteering.
My parents volunteered regularlyand there's a position in
summer league organizationcalled a runner and the runner
would take the swimming cardsfrom the table down to the timer
.
So that runner had to be quickto run the cards either from
where they originated to thetimers and then from the timers

(10:06):
back to who was calculating theresults.
And my dad was a runner.
That was the job that he did inevery single meet and so he was
out somewhere and he said thatthis person came up to him and
said, oh, I can see by your legsyou must be a runner.
And he said yeah, that's myfavorite position when I'm at
meets.
And he said this person lookedat him and they said, no, like a

(10:31):
runner, like somebody that does10Ks.
And he said, oh, I thought youmeant like my volunteer position
at a swim meet.
So he was so ingrained withbeing a runner at a swim meet
that he didn't even it didn'teven cross his mind that there
were people that ran withrunning shoes and timed
themselves in a 10K.
Dad, I just I'm going to missyou like crazy and I'm so

(10:53):
grateful that I got to see youlive, to be 95 and share all
this time with you and that youtaught me how to swim and you
showed me that I could always gofarther than I thought, and
this one's for you.
I love you, Dad.