Pride vs. Prejudice

Nicetown swim coach James Ellis inspired Terrence Howard's Pride. But his sights are still cast elsewhere.

by J.F. Pirro

James O. Ellis III always had a plan and a dream. For 35 years the swim coach has strived to inspire other African-Americans to excel in what's considered a white man's sport. And while he succeeded in his plan to turn his Philadelphia Department of Recreation (PDR) team into a perennial national powerhouse, he'd always thought it would be somehow bigger.

LAP STEEL: James Ellis at Nicetown's Marcus Foster Pool. Photo By: Michael T. Regan (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

For decades, he dreamed corporate America would rally behind him, cough up sponsorship money and build pools — and he'd have 500, 600 or 1,000 kids swimming. In other cities, he envisioned others replicating what he'd accomplished. He may finally get to see his dream realized thanks to a new film, Pride, based on his life.

"It just never caught on," Ellis, 59, laments, seated at the Houlihan's above City Avenue, across from his apartment where the closest body of water is the Schuylkill River. Because it's Martin Luther King Day, Ellis' normal haunt, Marcus Foster Pool in Nicetown, is closed. Without his normal twice-a-day swim practice, Ellis is exercising patience. Then a glimmer sparks in his eyes. "I hope the movie catches fire in lots of cities, so it helps get our kids of all races off the streets."

Of late, Ellis has struggled with those eyes. A diabetic, he's fighting to save his eyesight at Wills Eye Institute. He's had three eye surgeries since October. But he's persevered.

More than anything, though, he wants to see his dream through. That's the only reason he lent his name and story to Hollywood. Current city pools around the nation — those at recreation centers and YMCAs, even his own, which is 25 yards, or roughly half a 50-meter Olympic-sized pool — are "little bathtubs," he says.

"It's not what I'm going to think of the movie [that's important]; it's what other people are going to think." says Ellis.

"I always tried to go under the radar," Ellis says. "I tried to stay in the background, behind the kids and their parents. I was content knowing I was part of the plan. Now, I'm having to step out front and center, but it's time — maybe."

Slowly, under a thick salt-and-pepper mustache, a wide, warm and easy smile brims. He sips from an icy Arnold Palmer (half lemonade, half iced tea), and hopes this stroke of genius works.

Ellis, who remains employed by both the School District of Philadelphia and the city's Recreation Department, wrestled with his decision to sign away the rights to his story. However, he knows the movie and a forthcoming book could put him in a position to make a bigger splash. He's already registered with Keppler, a speakers bureau in Arlington, Va.

This month, he also began a 20-years-of-continuous-service sabbatical from Bodine High School, where he teaches math. Thus far, he's continued coaching at the pool.

However, the future is as uncertain as when his father, James O. Ellis Jr., first threw him into a Pittsburgh swimming pool to sink or swim. Thankfully, his dad gave the movie idea his blessing before he passed away over Father's Day weekend in 2005. Before Ellis III left that weekend to review the script in Hollywood, his father, who moved to Philadelphia so his son could care for him, told him, "Go for it."

A young adult in the civil rights era, Ellis III "marched to a different drummer," but says he didn't riot like others, or get arrested. He feared it'd break his patient-yet-progressive parents' hearts. Coaching his swim team, which became its most integrated and successful in the 1980s and '90s, was his way of protesting racial inequality.

He was running an evening recreational swimming program at his alma mater, Cheyney University (which he attended to swim, but the school later cut the program), when he applied for a job as a water safety instructor at Sayre Recreation Center at 58th and Spruce streets in West Philly. By 1971, he offered swimming lessons. In 1973, he started an all-African-American swim team called Sayre Aquatics Club. When he opened Marcus Foster Pool in 1980, he changed the team's name to PDR.

"I always told our swimmers that if no one knew what [PDR] stood for, we'd make it stand for something," Ellis says. "We wanted [the competition] to hear PDR and think, 'Oh shit, here they come!'"

When there was racism, he taught his swimmers to recognize it, then rise above it. His philosophy instilled a fibrous unity.

In the mid-'70s, the time period the movie focuses on, there were other city swim teams, the Polar Bears in Mt. Airy, the Tiger Sharks in North Philly and another at Lee Recreation Center in West Philly (now called the Serpents). "The difference?" Ellis asks. "I wanted [my team] to be in the Olympics."

While his middle initial stands for Oliver, a name he hates, his swimmers, who have numbered between 40 and 150 a year, began substituting "Olympian." In time, Ellis had five Olympic Trial qualifiers. However talented, those who conquered his program call him a godfather and a godsend.

"Jim has produced Olympians for life," says Wanda Smith, one of his first swimmers at Sayre. "The movie will let the world know there's a special person in Philadelphia who cares about his community and the young people who live there."

Ellis, who has a speaking cameo, has seen Pride three times. He'll only say he doesn't play the film's lone bad guy, a neighborhood drug dealer. Prior Academy Award nominee and Blue Bell resident Terrence Howard portrays Ellis in the film, which was shot in post-Katrina Louisiana, but has Philly outtakes. His team swims against a Main Line team coached by actor Tom Arnold. Ellis also unsuccessfully applies for a job at "Main Line Academy."

Earl Williams, a former PDR administrator who helped open Marcus Foster Pool, says Ellis' name is synonymous with pride: "He shared his own pride and built pride in those he came in contact with," Williams says.

Still, on the brink of his big-screen debut, Ellis, a self-described recluse, finds himself in uncharted waters. He says he might attend the Philly screening alone or with his only child, Shaun, 31, a former Special Olympics swimmer.

His post-movie plans are as uncertain. Before his chicken Caesar and wings arrive at Houlihan's, his cell phone rings. He never had a cell phone before the movie.

"I've got my seat belt fastened," Ellis says. "If the movie works out, it works out. If it's a bust, then I'm back in the classroom, and the movie and this interview will be it. I'll have had my 15 minutes of fame."

(j_pirro@citypaper.net)

A red-carpet screening of Pride will take place on Tue., Feb. 27, 7:30 p.m., at the Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St. and will be co-hosted by Mayor John Street and Philadelphia soul music legend Kenny Gamble, who wrote Pride's soundtrack. A limited number of tickets to the screening will be given away on-air by Power 99 FM and WDAS 105.3 FM. The film opens nationally March 23.