When I was but a budding competitive swimmer, at the age of nine, I attended your United Swimming Clinics camp. For a week you made me endure great pain and suffering in that pool at the Mercersburg Academy, but I came away from your training well prepared for success in the sport.
But it was not the pool work which had its most lasting effect upon my life, rather it was a dryland exercise to which I trace the beginning of my spiritual path.
You gathered all of the campers together in the upstairs rehearsal room in the former Boone Hall. You directed us to lie down on the cool floor, turned off the lights, and proceeded to lead us through a creative visualization hypnosis exercise. First you relaxed us from toes to head, then you directed us to swim a 100 meter race in a record time. You guided us through the first three lengths of the race, then allowed for us to swim the last leg on our own. When we touched the wall, we were to sit up, finishing both the race and the exercise. I remember the first several finishers sitting up. Out of the more than a hundred campers, I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.
You could not have known at the time that I would continue using the techniques you taught that day, even after my competitive swimming career came to an end.
Fast forward eight years, to when I was a student at Mercersburg Academy, and you were in your last years there as the head swim coach, before you moved on to your dream job at the University of Tennessee. My poor choices, and a fateful encounter with authority, had me facing expulsion. From what I was told after the gathering of the faculty to decide my fate, it was you who stood up and spoke on my behalf, ultimately swaying the vote in favor of my continued enrollment in the school.
At the last Alumni gathering two years ago, I learned of what may be considered your devastating fall from grace. It came as a shock to me, and I did not want to believe the news. Regardless of the poor choices you have made, I will always be grateful to you for setting me on the path of meditation, as well as for standing up for me when I most needed an advocate.
So thank you, very much, John Trembley. You can count on me to advocate on your behalf when we stand before the throne of eternal judgment.