Saf-T-Swim owner ready for summer classes

When he was 5 or 6 years old in the late 1950s, Jim Hazen jumped into a swimming pool in Sayville and found out an important fact: He did not know how to swim. A friend, Mike Mussler, helped pull him out of the water to safety.

Today Hazen owns one of the largest swimming instruction companies on Long Island, Saf-T-Swim of Deer Park, which has 10 schools, four in Nassau and the rest in Suffolk.

With summer around the corner, Hazen is gearing up for his busiest time of year.

In the mid-1980s, Hazen took his then 6-month-old son to a water park in Coram. A student of finance in college, Hazen sat in the parking lot awhile and counted the number of people going into the facility and how much each paid. Hazen thought the economics would work and so opened his first swim school in Bay Shore. Now, he says, each of his schools teaches about 1,000 people a week -- many of them children.

Both Hazen and Mussler, still close friends, vividly remember that day about 55 years ago when Hazen appeared to be drowning. Hazen was in the deep end, floundering, Mussler said. He jumped in, and Hazen was "crawling all over me." They made it to the side of the pool.

"There are things you are always going to remember," said Mussler.