By JAMES BROWN
Glasgow News 1
Joyce Driver wanted 12 children, but she ended up with thousands. They weren’t hers biologically. They were hers through a gift from God.
“God answers our prayers in many different ways,” Joyce said as she sat at a table at a new water park built inside Glasgow’s American Legion Park. The Joyce Driver Aquatic Center center fills an area in the park where once a softball field stood atop a hill.
“I wanted six girls and six boys, thank God I got one girl and one boy,” Joyce said. “My purpose was something else.”
Her purpose was to be a motherly figure to multiple generations of children who swam and played at the Glasgow City Pool. Joyce worked there for 40 years. She made sure the children had on their sunscreen, had someone to come get them at closing time, and that they obeyed the rules of the pool while under her watch.
That city pool closed a few years ago in preparation for the major overhaul of the park. Where the pool was at the front of the park near Happy Valley Road there are now pickleball courts.
Joyce said when she took the job at the city pool, she had no plans to work there for 40 years, “… but I loved every minute.”
“I have seen a lot of children that I claimed just as mine,” she said. “God answered my prayers, he multiplied them a whole lot.”
During the interview a mother came in with her two children and gave Joyce a hug. She introduced her children. She was just one of many seen hugging Joyce during the ribbon cutting ceremony.
“Everyday and every year they would come back again,” Joyce said. “Then they would have kids and they’d come up and say, ‘now this is Miss Joyce, you better listen to what she says.’”
The sign on the side of the new aquatic center in American Legion Park in Glasgow is pictured. James Brown/Glasgow News 1
THE ONLY ‘RIGHT’ NAME
Parks and Recreation Department Director Eddie Furlong said during a recent ribbon cutting that when the city was trying to decide what to name the aquatic park, the only name that seemed right was Joyce Driver.
He said it was the only social media post his department has ever made that had no negative comments.
Back in August 2025, Furlong pitched the idea of the aquatic center name during a Glasgow council committee meeting. He read from a prepared paragraph that was passed out to members of the parks and recreation committee.
“Joyce Driver worked as a seasonal pool manager and also concessions manager from 1982 to 2022 for my department. It was in 2022 when her health forced her to give up the job she loved. If you’ve ever been to the old city pool, which I’m sure most of us have, you ran into Miss Joyce. You heard her disciplining kids,” Furlong read.
Joyce did not know of the naming plan when the committee meeting occurred.
Furlong was asked during the meeting if he had considered any other names for the aquatic center.
“Honestly, I didn’t. That was the first thing that came to my mind, and I just think it feels like the right thing,” Furlong replied.
The committee approved to pass the naming recommendation on to the full Glasgow City Council, and that resolution passed in August. It stated that Joyce “played an integral role in the upbringing of thousands of children in our community and the success of the former City Pool.”
IT WAS GOD’S PLAN
Joyce Driver may have had only a son and a daughter of her own, but she said that was God’s plan. It was also the plan that she have thousands who passed through the doors to the city pool over 40 years who thought of her like she was their mother.
“They were my family,” Joyce said of all of the children she met. “I think I was somebody that they could see … loved them with all my heart.”
“If you always try to show the love for everybody like God shows for us, and be sincere, they know it,” she added.
