Throwing in the towel

City's aquatics center coordinator retires after 21 years

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Officially, June 19 is her last day, but two days from now, when the city's workweek ends, Aquatics Center Coordinator Stana Hurlburt will be a fish out of water.

After more than 21 years working in the city's Aquatics and Racquetball Center -- the last seven heading up the Central Park, soon to be Broadbent Park, facility -- the 56-year-old woman who once was a Malibu Beach lifeguard in sunny Southern California is turning in her whistle and visor Thursday afternoon.

After that, she and Doug, her retired husband, are heading off for a life of leisure in Lincoln County.

"We bought a house in Caliente in October that will be our retirement home," said Hurlburt, who 21 years ago lived in a tent at Lake Mohave's Cottonwood Cove for four months while their manufactured home was being delivered to Searchlight. For the two-plus decades since then, she's commuted 80 miles to work to and from Searchlight. "He retired several years ago and he's been after me for a long time to back down."

Hurlburt's history with water dates back to the early 1950's, shortly after her birth on Oct. 16, 1949.

"I started swimming when I was 4 in La Canada," she said in describing the San Gabriel Mountains foothill community about five miles north of Pasadena's Rose Bowl where she was raised. "That's where I started competitive swimming. Also, my parents were avid water skiers so I learned how to water ski when I was 5. After going to the river a lot, that's how we knew so much about Searchlight and why we decided to live there."

Hurlburt went to school in La Canada and graduated from La Canada High School in 1967.

"In high school I was involved in aquatics, big surprise, huh, and anything having to do with the handicapped," she recalled. "Working with the handicapped was always something I liked to do for whatever reason. No one in my family was handicapped. I was just drawn to these kids in school."

For all her love of aquatics and working with the disabled, it was a subject far afield, a subject out of the blue, that caught her fancy while going to Glendale Junior College.

"I first started out in aeronautical engineering because I wanted to be a commercial pilot and get my license," she said. "One of my first interviews was with American Airlines, but they said they didn't hire female pilots. They said I should be a stewardess instead. With that, they showed me the door. Nobody got upset at things like that then because you've got to remember, the women's movement hadn't taken off yet."

After graduation, Hurlburt got a job and an internship with the Braille Institute in downtown Los Angeles where her ambition to work with the visually impaired was fulfilled.

"I started out at the bottom and worked my way up," she said. "It became a full-time job and then there was working at the youth center and in the swimming pool on weekends when I taught and guarded during special events."

It was about that time that the 20-year-old Hurlburt had moved out of her La Canada home and started living with friends who had a beach house in Malibu.

"When (the homeowner's association) found out I had my lifeguard certification, they snatched me right up for work at the pool and guarding their private beach on weekends."

It was also at this time the curious young adult, eager to find herself in a world full of hippies, flower children and anti-war protests, took off for a cow pasture in upstate New York and what was at that time the world's biggest music concert -- the Woodstock Festival.

"We got there late and where the ticket booth was to go in, the crowd had already swelled out past it so we really didn't have to pay to go in," she said. "I didn't see a lot of the things they said went on at Woodstock, but the Grateful Dead is still my favorite musical group. It's too bad Jerry Garcia died."

Hurlburt's job at the Braille Institute entailed being a visual aid consultant with 16 appointments a day where she'd help people with low-vision reading aids.

"I loved my job, but it was a difficult job because people would be upset when you'd see them," she said. "But I really enjoyed my lifeguard job."

A few years later, Stana met Doug and, of all places, came to Las Vegas to get married on Feb. 9, 1974.

"It was at the same wedding chapel where Dennis Rodman got married," she said with a laugh. "I remember we sent to see Liza Minelli in a showroom some place, but I don't remember where."

After the Nevada nuptials, Hurlburt decided to quit her job at the institute and travel with her husband, a carpenter, who helped build recording studios all over North America.

She remembers one trip the first year they were married -- a four-month job in Toronto, Canada -- where she got pregnant with her first daughter, Lea.

The Hurlburts then moved back to La Crescenta, a northerly neighboring berg adjacent to La Canada, where they had their second daughter, Brie.

It was La Crescenta, just a couple of miles from where their mom learned to swim, where the girls as babies were introduced to water and later joined a swim team.

Stana took a job with the local YMCA for five years and then, in 1985, the Hurlburt family picked up and moved to Searchlight.

Looking for a place to swim, Stana contacted the closest pool, which was in Boulder City.

The girls joined Lake Mead Aquatics, a program privately run by Mike Polk and Steve Meyers.

"I promised my husband that when we got here I wouldn't get into aquatics again," she said. "So, when I got here I didn't say a thing. I just dropped the kids off for an hour, went to the market to shop and then picked them up."

About that time, Meyers left Lake Mead Aquatics for a casino job, which created an opening for a replacement.

"I told both girls to say nothing (about my experience), but of course that's a hard thing to do at the age of 6. Well, when they made an announcement asking if they knew anybody who could take Meyers' place, of course, it was Brie who had to let it be known that I was their swim coach."

Of course, the plea went out -- "I just need somebody for a month until I find someone else," Polk told Hurlburt -- and as of today, 21 years later, the city has yet to find that "someone else."

And, as they say, the rest is history.

The city has advertised the aquatics coordinator position that pays a salary of anywhere from $49,275 to $59,135 annually but received only one response as of the May 25 application closing date. Hurlburt was paid a salary of $60,868 this fiscal year as part of an $83,942 salary and benefits package.

She said her one last piece of unfinished business at the facility was a pool renovation that's sorely needed, but her biggest accomplishment was all the programs she's helped develop, which have aided in providing residents with a comprehensive swim program.

"Going away is tough," said Hurlburt who has swum all her life, but has yet to have a swimming pool at any of her homes. "Emotionally, it's hard, very hard. It's hard for everybody, including me, to let go and I'm tired of crying."

Parks and Recreation Commission Chairman Harold Begley told Hurlburt at her last commission meeting May 22, "Stana, we're going to miss you a whole lot. I just wish we could have gotten you a new pool before you left."

Aquatics assistant Bobbe Wilson, who's worked with Hurlburt 19 of her 21 years, said her focus on teamwork would be missed.

"She's in tune to teamwork and tries to make the job around here enjoyable for everyone," Wilson said. "We will continue on, but it will be different. It won't be bad; it'll just be different. I don't like to see this end because after all these years we were able to end each other's sentences and know what the other one was thinking."

As for Hurlburt's life of leisure, it may not be so leisurely.

"I didn't even know they had a pool in Caliente until we found out after buying the house," she said. "Their pool is open in the summer and now it's the typical 'Stana story' -- they have no one to run it. So, here we go again."