Program Guide Fall 2023

museum setting. I made several friends in the Greensboro area and so I was spending a lot of my free time here. I liked Greensboro and decided I wanted to move here upon graduating. In order to move, I needed to find a job. I was fortunate to be hired as a seasonal pool manager at the old Bur Mil Park swimming pool, which was managed by the City of Greensboro at that time. My supervisors, Chris Wilson and Tracy Pegram, had gone through the Recreation, Parks, and Tourism program at UNCG. I thought their jobs were really cool and impactful. I decided to take a couple of classes in Recreation, Parks, and Tourism and ended up enrolling in the Master’s program. Over the next few years at Bur-Mil, I had the opportunity to work in many aspects of the operation in addition to the pool – the park, camps and programs, golf – and those experiences further drew me into this line of work. My grandmother had a big influence on me as well. She spent a lot of time with my sister, cousins, and me while we were growing up and kept us busy in parks and recreation activities. She taught swim lessons and water aerobics for Raleigh Parks, Recreation, and Cultural Resources. We had the opportunity to work together at the same facility, Optimist Pool, when I was hired at my first full-time job in recreation. And she is proof that staying active through recreation is a key to a long, healthy life – as up through her 80s she biked every day and retired from working at the pool at age 88. Q: Do you have any project you oversaw in the past that you are particularly proud of? Back in 2007 (when I was assistant athletics director), kickball was not an organized sport here in Greensboro. Our Athletics Section was looking at ways we could better serve young, active adults. We were seeing a decline in our traditional adult sports and we knew that Greensboro was wanting to attract and retain young professionals. And of course, having appealing recreation and leisure options is an important factor in that. I was involved in leading the first adult kickball league and dodgeball programs, which at the time, were seen as kind of innovative. Now kickball is one of our largest sports programs. I was fortunate to have the guidance

Director FEATURE STORY

Keely Park Community Garden A Raleigh native with more than a decade of prior service in Greensboro, he says “to have the opportunity to lead Greensboro Parks and Recreation is just phenomenal.” “Our park system is really top notch. Our successes – national accreditation, recognitions and awards, grants, partnerships and more - speak for themselves, but it's about so much more than that,” he says. “It's about how each person in our community, each household interacts with and engages in what we do - such as visiting one of our 175+ facilities or participating in a program. It is the variety and number of these personal experiences that really make the difference here.” Read on to learn a little more about the new director. Q. How did you end up with a parks and recreation career? I was a competitive swimmer growing up. My first job was as a lifeguard and I continued that in college. I became a swim lesson instructor as well. I majored in history and psychology (at UNC Chapel Hill), and I thought that I wanted to teach or work in a Meet Our Director Phil Fleischmann He started out his parks and recreation career as a teenage lifeguard. Now Phil Fleischmann is the guy at the top, leading the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department’s 200+ staff members. Fleischmann was hired as director in December 2022. It marked his return to Greensboro after a three-and a-half year stint as Chapel Hill’s Parks and Recreation director.

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