WL: Can you call back a little later? I’m in the middle of a Scrabble game.
OSJ: Uh, well, actually…..
WL: Okay, let’s talk now.
OSJ: So tell me about the Wally pool. How did you find these pools, and how did they end up on St. John?
WL: It started when I was adding a large deck on a home on St. John called Lizard Hill. I realized that the deck was so large that it needed something, so we decided to put in a swimming pool. Knowing nothing about swimming pools, I investigated all different types, including concrete and above ground pools. I decided that a fiberglass pool would best-suit our needs. I located a company in Sarasota, Florida that manufactured fiberglass pools. I went up to look at one and to order it, but found out that the freight to get it down here would be as much, if not more, than the cost of the pool. So I got to talking to the manufacturer about the possibility of stacking together more than one. We ended up bringing down a 40 foot trailer with ten pools on it. All of the pools were sold before they ever hit the island, just from word-of-mouth. They were being used primarily in homes that were older homes that did not have swimming pools where people didn’t want to go into the cost of a concrete pool. These were easy to install. It all went from there. Just word of mouth. I never ran an ad about the pools or anything. We ended up selling about 75 pools.
OSJ: What year was this?
WL: This was back in ’95. We kept them stacked up in Majestic’s yard, which worked out nice because they allowed me to store them there. They in turn would get the contract from the people who purchased the pools to deliver them, plus if there was any excavating to be done, Majestic would get that work too. It was a mutually beneficial situation. It was all just word of mouth. One of those fluky things that took off. I just sat at home and answered the telephone.
OSJ: What was the typical purchase price and installation cost?
WL: Back then, somewhere around $5,000 to $7000.
OSJ: A lot cheaper than concrete.
WL: A lot of the original ones were even less than that because I was a little panicked when I had ten pools coming down and so I was selling some of them just at my cost. I had no idea that it would blossom into anything.
OSJ: Aren’t there different sizes?
WL: There were two sizes. They made 9 foot by 17 foot, and a 10 foot by 20 foot. The 9 by 17 was the more popular size because it could be set on a flat surface. If you were working on a hillside, you would just carve out a flat surface and build a wood frame for the pool to sit on, and then build your deck out around it. It was an easy installation. I put them together as a package. Each pool came with the plumbing and the fittings and the chemical kit, even the net and cleaning pole and filter. I packaged it all as a kit so people knew exactly what they were getting and what they were paying when it landed on St. John.
OSJ: What need did those pools fill?
WL: It was a wide range of people. Many older homes, but we also put them in new homes being constructed, not just older homes. We were able to put that pool on sites where putting a concrete pool in would have been extremely difficult.
OSJ: Did the growing rental market drive the need for pools?
WL: Oh sure. The older homes were trying to be competitive with the newer homes. Newer homes were all putting in pools. To be competitive with that, they were buying my pools.
OSJ: At what point did the name “Wally Pool” catch on? How do you feel about that?
WL: That’s fine with me. I’ve been called worse. I don’t know. I guess people would just say “You gotta call Wally for a pool. Get one of Wally’s pools.” And it just ended up being The Wally Pool.
OSJ: Is anybody still installing these kinds of pools?
WL: No…a couple of things happened. When the government imposed a tariff for bringing in anything over a thousand dollars, it drove the prices up. The manufacture’s price went up, especially after a fiberglass scare in the states that forced manufacturers to add a lot of expensive new processing and ventilation equipment. Then Majestic would no longer store the pools so there was no place to put them. It was just one of those things that died out. I still get calls from people about them though. I probably get a call a month.
OSJ: The first of these pools are a decade old or a little older now. How are they holding up?
WL: They’ve held up really well. There were some problems with occasional cracks around a step, but the beauty is that anything that would happen to them you could easily fix. And we learned as we went along too. At first, we just set the pools in place. We didn’t know anything about bracing them or anything like that. We finally figured it all out.
OSJ: What kind of reputation did those pools end up having?
WL: They ended up having a good reputation. I know of nobody who is unhappy. What ever problems there were, we took care of them.
OSJ: What are you doing on Lovango?
WL: We bought a piece of property over here five years ago. My wife and I lived in a little 10 foot by 11 foot cottage while we built a house. Now we have a house on the beach with a dock. We’re very happy over here. We raise some chickens. We’ve got some sheep. We’re just having fun.
OSJ: Thanks for talking to me. Get back to your Scrabble game!