For Michael McElwee, the hardest part of closing the Reading Flotilla Training Base’s longtime headquarters on River Road isn’t merely giving up the building.
It’s shutting the door on a place filled with memories for the many dedicated volunteers, who spent decades maintaining it, teaching boating safety classes there and building friendships that lasted a lifetime, he said.
“The people made the building; the building didn’t make the people,” said McElwee, a board member and secretary of the base.
After nearly 80 years, the Reading Flotilla Training Base is relinquishing the property at 2058 River Road because it can no longer afford the cost of maintaining the aging structure. The group will move its meetings and boating safety courses to a facility at Blue Marsh Lake. (MICHELLE LYNCH/READING EAGLE)
After nearly 80 years, the nonprofit organization is relinquishing the property at 2058 River Road because it can no longer afford the cost of maintaining the aging structure.
But the public should not mistake the move for the end of the organization or its mission, stressed James White, president of the group.
“The flotilla is staying active,” the Exeter Township resident said. “We’ve got 58 members in this flotilla.”
The Reading Flotilla Training Base was established in the years immediately after World War II as a separate nonprofit organization to support the activities of the local Coast Guard Auxiliary, now known as Flotilla 19-7, White explained.
The Reading Flotilla Training Base at 2058 River Road will be closing. Mike McElwee of Wyomissing, base director, and James White of Exeter Township, president of the board, stand between two buoys at the base. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Because the auxiliary is not permitted to own or maintain real estate, he said, the base corporation acquired the riverfront site, providing space for meetings, training and public boating safety education.
A Reading Eagle article announcing the building’s dedication in 1947 described how volunteers transformed an old stone house into a center for training and boating safety classes.
White said his research indicates the simple building near Haines Lock, or Lock No. 44, on the108-mile Schuylkill Navigation System was once a lock tender’s home.
The city conveyed the property totaling about 2.4 acres to the group in two deeds, dated 1951 and 1953. But a later deed, dated 1959, transferred the property back to the city for $1 under an agreement allowing the training base continued use of the site.
The Reading Flotilla Training Base at 2058 River Road will be closing. (BILL UHRICH/READING EAGLE)
Under the terms of the deed, the property will revert to the city and must continue to be used for recreational or educational purposes.
City representatives said they are hoping to meet with members of the base to discuss the property’s future.
The deed also specifies that the site serve as a memorial to the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve, a contingency-based component of the Coast Guard Reserve that can activate qualified members of the auxiliary for short-term, specialized duty.
Now, as then, most members of the training group also belong to the local auxiliary.
McElwee of Wyomissing, who joined both groups in 2002, grew up around the partner organizations. His father, also a member of both, remains active and continues teaching boating safety.
Over the decades, thousands of recreational boaters and Coast Guard Auxiliary members attended safety and other training courses at the base, he said.
This classroom in the Reading Flotilla Training Base headquarters, 2058 River Road, was painted and outfitted by members of the group, including Base Director Michael McElwee’s father, who also teaches boating safety. The group plans to vacate its current facility. Classes will be moved to a building at Blue Marsh Lake. (MICHELLE LYNCH/READING EAGLE)
For about 25 years, the base was supported in part by the beneficial social quarters operated on the lower level of an addition built in the 1950s, but that closed in the 1970s, McElwee said.
Maintaining the building became increasingly difficult in the ensuing decades as utility costs, insurance and ongoing repairs far exceeded the organization’s annual dues revenue.
Volunteer labor also became harder to find as longtime members aged and volunteerism declined, he said.
McElwee said the board had been discussing the building’s future for roughly 15 years before deciding it could no longer sustain the property.
Rather than ending operations, he noted, the organization is moving its activities to Blue Marsh Lake, where the Army Corps of Engineers has offered meeting and classroom space.
The training base will continue working closely with Flotilla 19-7, which also conducts boating safety courses and supports recreational boating safety efforts throughout the region, McElwee said.
Members of the local auxiliary will continue water patrols at Blue Marsh Lake using a vessel owned by the training base group, he said.
After nearly 80 years, the Reading Flotilla Training Base is relinquishing the property at 2058 River Road because it can no longer afford the cost of maintaining the aging structure. Meetings and boating safety courses will be moved to a facility at Blue Marsh Lake. (MICHELLE LYNCH/READING EAGLE)
The partnership with Blue Marsh, he said, ensures both organizations can continue serving the public while eliminating the financial burden of maintaining a building.
“We’re going to continue to thrive,” he said. “We’re going to continue to support our communities.”
It is not just the organization’s programs and legacy of service that McElwee, White and the other members plan to retain.
As members sort through decades of records and memorabilia before vacating the building, they are preserving documents, photographs and stories of the volunteers who came before them.
For McElwee, the real legacy of the River Road property is not the structure itself.
“It’s the people that did all the work,” he said.