It was a much different world when I wrote the majority of this book in the last half of the year 2017. Even though I've been writing on a whole menagerie of topics for the better part of my life, in 2017, I had never had anything published.
Compared to this time of 2024, life was much more carefree just seven years prior. COVID hadn't been created yet, thus the word pandemic was the furthest thing from almost any human mind in the world then. The only reason that the word pandemic was not in my cobwebs at this time was because of my research that I had already done on Project Freeth, whose main character (George Douglas Freeth Jr.) died from the worst pandemic of the twentieth century way back in 1919.
In 2017, I had no idea that the title of this book was going to turn out to be Natation. Back when I wrote this, in my mind, it was going to be Lee's Manual to Swimming.
(For further information on the original book title, read the introduction. Unfortunately, Lee is no longer with us, passing away just six short months ago.)
This book is both dedicated and placed in memory of her. It was during my further research on Project Freeth, Volume 2, during COVID in 2019 and 2020, that I discovered in the various obituaries announcing the death of George, describing him as a foremost authority of nanation. Well, to make a long story short, in the end, it was discovered that today's version of nanation is actually natation, which is the very subject of this book, even though I didn't know the word way back in 2017.
(Before moving on, there's a bit of a humorous detail worth mentioning. When I first discovered the word nanation, I called my dad, who was born in 1935, and asked if he ever heard of the word. His reply was no, but he had heard of the word nananation, which meant skinny dipping to him.)
Almost all the other students and their families I featured in this book are still alive. They've just moved on. Davide, the eleven-year-old boy, is now entering his sophomore year at UCLA. He's in both the swimming club and the water polo club there. Due to present NCAA rules, clubs are the highest level of support that the school offers now. The kids I worked with whose father is a Navy SEALS reservist relocated to Tennessee, enjoying a whole new world in the Appalachian foothills, moving on and upward.
Bottom line is this book details the science of human movement in water and how it's taught to the uninformed but willing. I hope everyone who reads this is enriched with the subject matter one way or another. Peace out.
