“If you want your kids to learn how to swim, you send your kids to Mr. Thorpe.”

Giles Smith says it is so matter-of-factly. That’s just how it was in his predominantly-Black Baltimore County, Maryland neighborhood, where the two-time Pan American Games medalist grew up.

“If you wanted to learn how to swim where I grew up in Baltimore, there was a pool not too far away where many people who also look like you have been taught how to swim for years,” he said. Smith’s god sister, Angel, and her brother Michael learned how to swim here and, like many parents, Smith’s parents wanted him to learn how to swim too. Naturally, they sent their son to Mr. Thorpe’s backyard pool back in 1997.

“Marvin Thorpe, Sr. taught me how to swim,” Smith explained. “He gave me the confidence to use swimming as an outlet to express myself to people. He gave me the beginning tools. Back then, I never thought of being a real swimmer like this. He gave me the tools to want to swim and actually directed me to my very first USA Swimming club, the Baltimore City Swim Club. That was also a predominantly African-American team in Baltimore City. After that, I started moving to the Catonsville, YMCA and Eagle Swim Team when I started swimming at a higher level. My USA Swimming competitive swimming career wouldn’t have begun if it wasn’t for Marvin Sr. and his son, Marvin Jr. - he’s continued to do the great work his father had already started.”

On September 25, 2020, Marvin Thorpe II received the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion award during the USA Swimming Convention for continuing the lifesaving work his father started in the family’s backyard pool nearly 50 years ago. When Smith was just taking to the water, Marvin Jr. was helping him as one of the program’s lead staff members, before later going on to take over the program upon his father’s passing in 2004. Prior to his passing, Smith would eventually get his first summer job working for Marvin Sr. as a camp counselor.

“I was one of his protégés as a young child,” Smith said. “He allowed me to work and gave me my very first job and I was able to also help teach my people how to swim.”

There’s no advertisement for this Baltimore institution that has taught more than 15,000 kids to swim since 1972 – all the Thorpe-family students found this pool via word of mouth.

While Smith noted there’s no singular Black experience, what he saw in his community was often times fear and anxiety in situations that were new to them simply because they haden’t experienced those situations. “What Marvin Sr. really has done is he made an environment where it was possible for people to be themselves, where they were able to learn a new skill and able to take it further if they liked,” Smith said. And that’s what he did under the tutelage of Marvin Jr. and Sr.

As a Black child competing in swimming, Smith said he would get made fun of as a kid by adults as well as other kids for not competing in track, basketball or football. He credits his parents and the Thorpes and many great coaches over the years for helping him stick with the sport he loves.

“For sure I know that I would have never learned how to swim,” Smith said. “I would have never been pushed in the direction that is USA Swimming. I can clearly say I would have never been a USA swimmer if it weren’t for Marvin Thorpe Sr. and his son.

“I definitely had moments where I felt out of place - moments where people said terrible things to me as a little kid but the way I was raised, if you have a situation like that, my parents taught me to just prove them wrong in the pool,” Smith said. “Prove them wrong in the classroom. Continually prove people wrong. That foundation – it started back to Marvin Thorpe’s pool – because it was fun and I was able to gain confidence in something I didn’t know at the time would be a life skill that would completely change the direction of my life.”

Smith would later go on to win the 100-yard Butterfly title at the U.S. Winter National Championships in 2014 and is a 15-time NCAA All-American who also won three Pac 12 titles and two NCAA relay titles for the University of Arizona. Smith has also been named a vice-captain of the International Swimming Leagues DC Trident.

And just as it was for Smith, lessons learned in the Thorpe family pool extended well beyond the basics of strokes or breathing techniques. As he explained, the parents would drop their kids off – make sure things are safe the first day – but the parents are not allowed to stay because “we work.”

“Marvin and his late father put you in a spot where you might be a little uncomfortable at first, but then they would have a showcase at the end of the summer, and that’s where the parents are finally allowed to see,” Smith said. “Usually the parents are amazed by the progress their children have made. These are kids who are often terrified of the water when they start and when they leave in a couple weeks, they love the pool.”

Smith knows that while the kids learning to swim may be uncomfortable at first, he understands the feeling extends to the parents as well as many didn’t learn to swim as children themselves. According to a 2017 report from the USA Swimming Foundation, a study conducted by the University of Memphis and University of Nevada – Las Vegas found that if parents have no/low swimming ability, there's a high likelihood their children won't have good swimming skills. Sixty-eight percent of Black children are also reported to have little-to-no swimming ability.

“For a lot of older Black adults, they may have not had the opportunity to go to a community pool and learn as a child, so that fear has crept in and stayed with those people until they become adults,” Smith said. “What Mr. Thorpe did for even the adults is significant because he was breaking generational curses – there’s no other way to say it.”

“Mr. Thorpe Jr. is very passionate about what he does. He makes it fun, but there is an understanding that we need to go to work. That type of fun-but-go-to-work attitude has rubbed off on me. I teach a lot of kids to swim out here in Arizona that are Black, white – all races. A lot of Mr. Thorpe Sr. and Marvin Jr.’s teachings have rubbed off on me when I teach kids how to swim. I probably didn’t realize it as much at the time, but I feel like I’m an extension of them.

“Marvin Thorpe is articulate, compassionate, but he gets the kids to work,” Smith said. “For a lot of kids in our community, that may have been the first time they’ve seen an example of hard work to a technical craft. Other than my father and grandfather, Mr. Thorpe Jr. and Mr. Thorpe Sr. were great example of hardworking, intelligent and articulate Black men. In today’s society, we don’t have enough good stories about that.”