Three Summer Gems in the City; Perfect for Hot, Sunny Days

When Tara Hahn bought her home in north Woburn three years ago, she didn’t know about the municipal summer feature right down the street.

Jill Siverhus, who lives in her family home in the Green Street area, knows all too well about a similar feature in her neighborhood.

Khara Coughlin also lives in the Green Street area but found a “hidden” municipal gem in east Woburn.

Coughlin, Siverhus and Hahn each spoke to Woburn Patch Friday afternoon at a different municipal pool.

Hahn, who described herself as a swimmer, was “beyond ecstatic” to discover the Rocco Schelzi Pool on Main Street, between Ferullo Field and .

She and her son, James, 3, “a little swimmer,” and daughter, Anna, 9 months, a “water baby,” sometimes take a dip there, she said, twice a day. Hahn said they’d probably even come to the pool on July 4, “at least for a while.” Her husband, Christian, is not a swimmer, she said. Hahn is usually one of the first residents, she said, to buy a summer family pass to the pool in May, at the discounted rate of $35 for the summer. 

Feet dangling into the water, Michelle St. Cyr, now of Tewksbury, said she has come to this pool since she was 16. Now St. Cyr’s mother, Judith Hegge, brings St. Cyr’s four daughters, ages 16, 13, 9 and 4 to the pool a lot during the summer, St. Cyr said.

Mature trees around the Schelzi Pool shade the area. Beyond the hard pool deck, there’s a section of grass, ideal for chairs and beach towels.

Sitting in chairs on the grass, friends Margaret Valentine, Kelly Adams and Maria Tancredi said they used to go to the Green Street pool when they were kids. “This is an upgrade,” quipped Valentine. Now each of the long-time friends has three daughters, around the same ages. Mothers and daughters all came to the pool Friday. The pool is ideal for a dip after work, Valentine said.

The atmosphere at this pool is more relaxed than at the Green Street pool, according to lifeguards Kylee Murray and Andrea Desmond.

South and east of the Schelzi Pool, the Cox Pool on Green Street sits right in front of the .

There is little natural shade here, other than the umbrella shielding the lifeguards from the sun.

That doesn’t bother Jill Siverhus. “I love the sun,” she said. “I’m a sun goddess.” Patrons can bring umbrellas, she said, or portable cabanas for little children. Both junior Siverhuses, Joseph, 11, who will be going into sixth grade at the in the fall, and his sister, Jesse, 10, who will be a fifth grader at the Shamrock, said most of their friends come to this pool, too. All three members of the Siverhus family had the same first grade teacher at the Shamrock School, they noted:  Armene Chorbajian.

This site usually offers another summer feature:  a shallow wading pool.  The chlorine was too low in the wading pool, lifeguard Katelyn Caldwell explained, so it was closed Friday.

Caldwell described her job as lifeguard as “the best job I ever had.” She’s outside all day, she elaborated, has great work hours, great coworkers and a great boss.

Farther east of the Green Street pool, Khara Coughlin sat on the deck of the Golden Pool in east Woburn while her daughters, Cheyenne, 9 and Noelle, 6, played in the water. Coughlin described the pool as nice and clean and getting there as “better than driving to the beach.” The Coughlin family lives closer to the Shamrock pool, and usually goes there every week, Coughlin said, but fewer people use the East Woburn pool.

Lifeguards Jon Linehan and Danielle Olsen described the Golden Pool as a family pool, where parents come with children but don’t usually swim. The Green Street pool draws kids—some all day, every day, all summer, Olsen said. The pool in north Woburn draws families with parents who go into the water, Linehan and Olsen said.

A grandmother at Golden Pool, watching her two granddaughters described that pool, surrounded by trees and situated on a quiet street near Calvary Cemetery, as “wonderful.” Don’t tell people about it, she urged, declining to give her name, because “a lot of people don’t know about it.”

Pool wristbands are available at the Recreation Department in City Hall for Woburn residents only. The rate for a family is $50 for the season ($35 if bought between May 2 and June 3).

Pool hours, from the Recreation Department website: 

Monday through Friday

All three pools—10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Saturday

Green Street and E. Woburn—10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

N. Woburn—noon to 7 p.m.

Sunday

All three pools—noon to 5 p.m.

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