Sometimes contributors to local history are well known because they appear in public or frequently appear in newspapers. Other influential people may fly under the radar, never seeking a high profile. Such is one amazing North Fulton woman Dorothy Warren. Together with her husband Mike (1936 – 2023) she influenced many people. “She knows everybody” was a common refrain.
Dorothy Warren was born and raised in California. Her parents were members of a club that had a swimming pool where Dorothy learned to swim.
Before a vaccine was introduced in 1955, polio was the scourge of the United States. Throughout the 20th century paralytic poliomyelitis infected about 16,000 people every year in the United States, mostly children, and left many of them permanently crippled. During several epidemics between 1948 and 1955, many people avoided places where crowds gathered including swimming pools, some because of the hordes of people and some because they thought swimming pools spread the disease. During one of the epidemics, the pool where Dorothy swam was closed, and Dorothy was unable to continue her love of the water.
Dorothy met Mike on a Hawaiian cruise, and they married in 1960. In the early 1970s, the couple moved to Houston. When polio was eliminated in the United States, Dorothy took up swimming again. She became a proficient swimmer and went house to house in her Houston neighborhood teaching women and babies how to swim. Houston wasn’t very cold, so she could work most of the year.
In 1975, the Warrens moved to Alpharetta and, naturally, bought a house on Bethany Bend where they could install a pool and raise their three children Lori, Steve and Michael.
“No one was teaching swimming,” Dorothy says. “Boys would go fishing with their fathers even though they could not swim. One day a boy from down street came by and asked if I…
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