RESERVE — A line of children and adults crowded next to the wall of the shallow end of Regala Park’s pool on Wednesday as they began their last swimming lesson of the season.

All at once instructors began giving orders and positioning their students’ bodies in the shimmering blue water and speaking to them in comforting, reassuring tones. Then, the instructors let go allowing the students to flip their arms and kick their feet to freely, and without assistance, propel themselves through the water — the benefits of the lessons on display.

This is the third year in which swimming lessons have been offered at no cost to parish residents through the Ashley Kelly Swim Program with assistance from the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation and the American Red Cross.

Organizer and instructor Melynie Wright said somewhere near 500 students have participated since the program’s inception.

Wright said learning how to swim is a vital skill everyone should have.

“It is very, very important,” Wright said. “It should really be part of the checklist of raising children. You are living in southeast Louisiana. Water is everywhere. You need to learn how to swim! You need to know about water safety, because the biggest percentage of kids dying under the age of 2 is drowning.”

Wright said the lessons are not just limited to swimming, but cover all aspects of water safety including how to use floatables to help a person in trouble or identify a lifeguard or parent who can help in the case of emergency.

“We teach them with as few words as possible so they remember them,” Wright said. “The safety element is tremendous.”

This year 150 children and 20 adults took part in the lessons that were offered over a two-week period at three pools across the parish.

Wright said getting adults involved is critical to the success of water safety.

“The adult numbers have really increased, and really that that is the key to stopping kids from not learning how to swim,” Wright said. “That is the key, you get the parents and the grandparents involved in the pool they can possibly save their child’s, or someone else’s, life.”

Gillian Hughes is one such parent who recognizes the importance of teaching her children, 7-year-old Kennedy and 6-year-old Whitney how to swim.

While Kennedy and Whitney are more focused on the recreation aspect of the activity, Hughes said she is very aware they are learning a skill that may save their lives one day.

“We are in southeast Louisiana and it is very vital for them to be able to swim and get in the water and get out if they have to,” Hughes said.

This is the third year Hughes has taken her daughters to swimming lessons and she said she is not done.

“I have to drill it into them,” Hughes said. “I’m glad we have it here in the parish. It is needed.”

On the other end of the spectrum is 67-year-old grandmother Lorraine Roussel, who this summer just learned how to swim, proving it is never to late to learn how.

While Roussel said she began to learn to swim almost six decades ago, she quit after a traumatic event and never picked it back up until now.

“I could only stand up in water,” Rouseel said. “I couldn’t go underwater and I was afraid of water. If I couldn’t touch bottom I was afraid.”

Roussel said it was only when she began taking her grandchildren to lessons that she thought about taking them herself.

“I wasn’t pushed to learn when I was young,” she said. “You have to teach that to the young people, and I wish somebody would have pushed me more. It took me a while.”

While Wright said it is difficult to measure the impact of water safety she knows the swim lessons are helping St. John residents.