Newton A. Perry

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Newton A Perry, also known as Newt Perry founded a swim school in the 1950's.

In 1922, the 14 year old Newton A Perry and his family moved to the Ocala, FL area. "Newt" as he was known, was delighted to find that he could continue his swimming career in the clean, clear water at Silver Springs. He would try to train everyday but found that people wanted him to teach the non-swimmers to swim instead. That's ohw he started teaching the local Ocalaens to swim. In 1924, Newt became Ocala High Schools swim coach and star swimmer. The remarkable part of this story is that Newt was only 16 years old at that time. His high school team was tops in the state and Newt held many of the state's swimming race titles. He once swam 25 miles in 7 hours, 28 minutes. In his college years, he swam and dove for the University of Florida and was named to the All-American Team.

Newt learned all he could about swimming, diving and lifeguarding. When the American Red Cross published their aquatics book during the 1920s they selected Silver Springs to shoot the underwater pictures for their manuals. They used Newt in many of their shots.

Silver Springs in the 1920s and 30's was not that well known and the Springs owner, Mr. Carl G. Ray, Sr. and Mr. W.M. (Shorty) Davidson, would invite journalists from all over the country to come visit their attraction. Newt and his sisters would put on swimming exhibitions both on top of the water and under the water. Some of those snap shots would appear in newspapers in Atlanta, Washington, D.C., New York, Jacksonville, Tampa, and other large cities. Life magazine did several articles on Silver Springs and the Perry family.

Ray and Davidson invited a movie producer, Grantland Rice, to come vacation in the Ocala area and to be their guest on a tour of Silver Springs. While Mr. Rice was visiting the springs, he helped to see some of the aquatic abilities of Newt Perry and was very interested and impressed with what he saw. Mr. Rice set up his motion picture cameras to record the interesting footage of the swimmer both on the surface and under the surface of the water. Newt demonstrated his powerful freestyle up stream and then dove underwater to perform swimming backwards, somersaults, eating a banana, drinking a soda and other unusual skills. When Newt surfaced the motion picture crew was going wild with excitement. Newt had stayed underwater three minutes and 45 seconds! A new world's record for that day in age and it was even captured on film.

Over the next 30 years Newt Perry helped produce over 150 Grantland Rice Sportligh reels. These films were human interest stories about 15 minutes in length that were shown before the featured movie at theaters across the country. These reels showed different themes like picnics, weddigns, school rooms, track meets, night clubs with bands, and bartenders among many other story lines. Mr. Rice once did a reel called "The Human Fish" and proclaimed Newt Perry the Best All American Swimmer in the first half of the 20th century.

Anytime Hollywood would do a movie with a scene involving water, Newt Perry would be the contact man to set everyting up. He worked with many famous actors and actresses like W.C. Fields, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Jayne Mansfield, Ann Blyth, Lloyd Bridges and many more. Newt's favorite actor to work with was Johnny Weismuller.

In 1948, Newt developed Weeki Wachee Springs Attraction and is credited with performing the first underwater shows there. It was later that year that Newt Perry met his future wife Dot. Newt was President of the Florida Attraction Association and attending a convention at Miami Beach. Dot was trainting for the 1948 Olympic Diving team in one meter and tower diving. A mutual friend and former Olympic diver, Kathryn Rawls, introduced the two. An instant connection began when Newt climed to the top of a 10 meter diving platform and started diving, dive for dive, with Dot. Dot found that Newt could do almost anything in the water and that led to a year long, long distance romance. Dot had signed with Water Follies (a local Syncronized Swimming Act) after failing to make the Olympic Diving team. She toured Cuba, Mexico, Central and South America as their star diver.

After Newt and Dot's wedding in the fall of 1950, they moved to San Marcos, Texas to develop Aquerena, an underwater attraction similar to Weeki Wachee. Eager to return to Florida after completing the development of Aquarena, Newt and Dot decided to come back to Ocala. On August 10, 1951 Delee Perry was born to Newt and Dot and today she resides in Ocala.