Mythbuster: Did you hear the one about the swimming pool under the gym and the rifle range somewhere in this school?
Photos and Story by Melinda McCorkle October 20 , 2011
Leechburg is a small town with big mysteries. As rumors flow through the hallways of Leechburg Area High School, they soon turn into myths. By definition, a myth is a belief or legend accepted as history. Leechburg’s myths, however, are a bit different from the traditional, from ghosts roaming the stairways to a rifle range in the maintenance department area to a swimming pool underneath the gymnasium. After hearing these rumors over and over again, it becomes difficult to separate the facts from the fiction. The Mythbusters’ goal is to discover the truth, one rumor at a time.
This column's myth is one we've all heard before – there's a swimming pool underneath the gym – or at least there were plans for one. Obviously, no swimming pool exists anywhere in this school now, but was there one 40 years ago? To get all the facts, I decided to dig a little deeper and ask the one man who would know everything most of us didn't – veteran school district maintenance crew member, Greg "GP" Paul.
“You’ll find in life most rumors are based on fact," he said. In 1967, he explained, the Leechburg Area School District was given a grant to renovate and a choice between two options – build a planetarium or a swimming pool. The school board opted to create the planetarium, which was located in the area where the nurse's and guidance offices, teachers’ lounge, and adjacent classrooms on the other side of the building are now. The planetarium remained part of the school until 1995.
Paul said, “They never put in the swimming pool, but the rumor was started. A few years went by, and the people hear this about a swimming pool. Where’s the only place big enough to have a swimming pool? Under the gym."
Underneath the gym, however, there is about a 3-foot crawlspace. The gym floor doesn't sit on the ground, but there was never a swimming pool.
A maintenance staff member since 1969, Paul said that he'd only seen the planetarium in operation once. "To my knowledge, it broke down and they never fixed it,” he said. “It had a 20-foot dome and it sat there for 25 years. Nobody ever ran it."
But that's not all. Down in the “boiler room” lies yet another rumor. Could there ever have been a rifle range in this school?
"You’re sitting in the ‘rifle range’ [boiler room],” Paul told me as I interviewed him in the area where the maintenance workers keep their equipment. “Way back then, the Cold War was going on between the Soviet Union and us,” he said. “Almost everybody knew how to use guns. I think some schools used to have rifle teams. So, also in the ’67 remodeling, this whole basement was built. They were going to form a rifle team and come down here [the boiler room] and shoot, but then they dropped that. It’s our maintenance shop now."
So, for those of you who always believed the “swimming pool underneath the gym” rumor, there’s your answer. A swimming pool doesn’t and never did exist under the gym. There never was a rifle range anywhere in the school either. But, there was a huge planetarium with a dome and a projector for looking at constellations. Rumors certainly do start in strange ways, but, as GP says, most rumors are based on fact.
This myth has officially been BUSTED.
Have a myth you want busted this coming school year? Contact the LBG Mythbusters at TrottyVeck2010@gmail.com
