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DOLPHIN POOLS & SPAS Inc, HISTORY...
Ted Ludlow was in the grocery business almost all his life and his eldest son, Donald Reese Ludlow, started working for his dad when he was 10 years old. Nine years later on June 25, 1950 the Korean War begun and, wanting to avoid being drafted to the fighting, Don joined later the Utah Air National Guard. The radar site was on a large Naval Base a
nd featured an even larger swimming pool. Although Don couldn’t swim he spent quite a bit of time around the pool and gradually lost his fear of water. It wasn’t until 18 months later after a road trip on the way home from his station at the Kansas Naval Base that the idea occurred to Don that the Ludlow family needed their own backyard swimming pool. Ted Ludlow wasn’t really excited by the idea and Don decided to let it go. A short time later Don found himself delivery groceries to a Mrs. Pat Gibbons who was having some remodeling done in her backyard. When Don asked her what they were doing, Mrs. Gibbons replied that they were having their own personal backyard swimming pool built. Don told his dad about it and it must have struck a cord with Ted because Ted called Mrs. Gibbons to get the contractor’s name. Ted then called their contractor – Joe Lamb – to get a bid for a pool of their own. Joe gave Ted a quoted price of $6500.00 for a pool – regardless of size. “To heck with that, I’ll build my own pool!” said Ted. During a vacation to southern California Ted looked up a swimming pool equipment company by the name of Morino & Testa and ordered the items he would need to build his own pool. The pool equipment came with plans and specifications for Ted to use. According to Don, “Within a week or two we had the pool excavated, plumbed, the rebar tied and the pool gunited. Since there was no pool plastering company in Salt Lake we had a coating of white cement and fine sand shot over the gunite. We had Peterson Monument Company cast our coping and the pool had no tile at this time. It was finished in time for the Labor Day weekend in 1953.” (See the article in the September 2, 1953 edition of the Deseret News & Telegram for more information about this first pool.) Three Ludlows had helped build the pool: Ted, Don and Ted’s brother Roy. Since they had learned so much about pool building by building one of their own it was decided that the three of them would launch their own pool building business. Roy spent three months in Los Angeles working with Morino & Testa and upon his arrival home in Utah they started in business as Star Pools with their office on the corner of Gregson Avenue and State Street in Salt Lake City. Eleven pools were built that first year – including one each for the Romney Motor Lodge and the Deseret Inn Motel. For the next several years Don worked in the family grocery store in the winter and on pools during the summer.Wanting to keep ahead of the technology curve, Roy had heard that fiberglass pools would be the wave of the future and wanted to try out the fiberglass pool idea himself. Not pleased with the fiberglass pool, but having learned quite a bit about fiberglass, Roy made a fiberglass boat with Bruce Townley. That was how Hydroswift Boats was formed. Ted and Roy Ludlow dissolved Star Pools in 1957 and Don continued to build pools on his own until November 1959 when Bettilyon’s, Inc. approached him to manage their Esther Williams swimming pool division. Don’s first order of business was to change the name of this company to something very different from the bland-sounding Esther Williams. Don bought out Bettilyon’s February, 1 1961 and continued growing his business from there until his retirement in 2009 at the age of 76. Only two pool companies preceded the Ludlow’s and both are now defunct. Joe Lamb’s company was called Patio Pools and Joe continued building pools until inventing the automatic swimming pool cover and founding a company called Cover-Pools. The other pool builder, Nichol’s Landon Blue Lake Pools, run by Wayne Nichols was in business until sometime in the 1970s. Don says that he’s seen many other builders come and go. Over the years Dolphin Pools, Inc. has built hundreds of pools in the intermountain region and its surrounding states. In the early 1970’s Dolphin was hired to build pools for European Health Spas and for several years built pool and spas for them in locations from Sarasota, Florida to Honolulu, Hawaii. Dolphin Pools, Inc. continues today as Utah’s premier pool builder and in the Ludlow family: From Ted to Don and from Don to Jeff, Don’s youngest son. Don’s oldest son, David, left Dolphin to start a spa company called Bullfrog Spas in 1996. And just so you know, Don has not yet learned how to swim.
