You can forget about riots, racial profiling, taxes, and Mideast conflicts if you are in Mount Lookout. The hottest topic in this east-side community is the new swimming pool.

        Construction has started on the $1.3-million, eight-lane pool on Ellison Avenue, complete with a shallow pool and new buildings.

        Members of the Mount Lookout Swim Club are paying for it.

        “The old maxim, everything old is new again, has never been more apropos as it is with regard to the Mount Lookout Swim Club,” said Cindy Kelly, membership chairwoman. “Over 40 years things have changed at the neighborhood pool.”

        She said the club has added a second parking lot, playground, tennis courts, snack bar and baby pool.

        The old pool was beginning to show its age. Construction started on the new pool the day after Labor Day last year, Ms. Kelly said. Opening is set for Memorial Day weekend.

        Stop by the clubhouse, at Ellison Avenue and Totten Way, from 2-5 p.m. Sunday for an update on the construction.

        The Mount Lookout Swim Club has about 450 families and another 100 senior and individual memberships.

        The memory of Kelly A. Booms, a 1999 graduate of Miami University in Oxford, is carried on through a scholarship.

        Ms. Booms died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York.

        Her family lives in Blue Ash.

        The scholarship in her honor was set up by the partners and staff of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Ms. Booms' former employer.

        The first winner of the Kelly A. Booms Memorial Scholarship is Matthew David Prescott, a junior finance and accounting major from Columbus. He will receive $4,000.

        “We are proud to establish a permanent endowment in Kelly's memory to honor her and her family and to recognize the top students at Miami through the annual scholarship award,” said Jay Henderson, U.S. markets and industries leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

        Mr. Henderson is a 1977 graduate of Miami University and a member of Miami's board of trustees.

        Nine seniors in a religion class at Summit Country Day School,2161 Grandin Road, Hyde Park, have spent one class a week this school year tutoring a third-grade class at Whittier Elementary School, 945 Hawthorne Ave., Price Hill.

        “This is our community service project and we have had a lot of fun with it,” said Katie Woliver, one of the students.

        Ms. Woliver, 18, of New Richmond, will graduate this year. She plans to attend Georgetown University.

        Allen Howard's “Some Good News” column runs Sunday-Friday. If you have suggestions about outstanding achievements, or people who are uplifting to the Tristate, let him know at 768-8362, at ahoward@enquirer.com or by fax at 768-8340.

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