Lifeguards of Summers Past Surface in Laguna

Ah, summer. Seventy degrees of cloudless sunshine toasting the breeze. The smell of sea salt and cocoa butter and bologna sandwiches wafting over the sand. Bare bodies, or nearly bare, shooting basketballs in the city hoops at Main Beach.

Maybe you can’t go home again, but it sure looked like home again Sunday for much of the Laguna Beach lifeguard ranks, old and new, when the city lifeguard association sponsored a fund-raiser for its 1,200-square-foot headquarters scheduled for completion in October.

Donating to the Cause

It was a day for architects and doctors and salesmen--the lifeguards of a decade ago--to pull huaraches and OPs from the back of the closet and drive to Laguna Beach for a return to their old summer haunts, at least for an afternoon.

On Sunday, anyone who donated $10 to the cause--the cause in this case being the $2,000 still needed to complete the $50,000 building--could sign the plywood inside walls, chomp down tacos and guacamole and mingle for a while with that special breed that spends eight hours a day, five days a week, three months a year, on the beach.

It was billed as a “stud signing party,” and true to promise, several of lifeguarding’s more estimable members allowed their silhouettes to be traced in crayon along the floor and walls of the new building for signing later. By midday, several hundred dollars had been raised and the walls were nearly covered with autographs proclaiming everything from “Rookies Rule” to, simply, “Bob French. Oak Street. 48-54.”

Bob French today is Dr. Robert French, dentist. But starting back in 1948 and continuing during his high school and college years, he was king of Oak Street Beach.

Today he carries a lifeguard association membership card in his wallet proclaiming him a member of the “Old Guard,” and he has been one of the most regular contributors to the lifeguard headquarters fund, writing out checks whenever funds were low.

‘Chuck Toast’

Because the 60-member summer lifeguard force uses a small tower on the Main Beach as headquarters, he said, “You’ve got lifeguards using public restrooms, no room for dispatching, for support vehicles, for good central communications. They really need this.”

Charles Ware, a Mission Viejo Co. executive, arrived with his wife and two children and proclaimed in crayon along the north wall that, yes, “Chuck Toast” was back.

Ware worked the beach every summer from 1968 to 1978, when he finished college. “Then I got married and had to find a full-time job and, I guess, face the reality of it all,” he said.

For him, Sunday was a chance to catch up with old buddies and “see their children growing up. It’s pretty dramatic, the way our life styles have changed,” he said.

“But it’s been a good change. It’s part of the pattern of living, I guess. But I think lifeguarding probably helped prepare me for being a family man, having a wife and children . . . . I mean, basically it’s the same, good old summertime profession that a lot of guys envy, but I wish every teen-age guy growing up would have that same kind of responsibility.

“Being disciplined, working hard, being competitive, having a goal and trying to attain it, understanding life-and-death situations, which do happen on the beach. Many people go all through life and never have to deal with anything like that, and so they never understand what it is.”

Brent Jacobson, 18, of Corona del Mar, son of Newport Beach’s lifeguard chief, said, “I love it. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Help From Former Guards

Lifeguard Capt. Mike Dwinell, who has worked almost full time on the headquarters project in recent years, said local contractors and businessmen have supplied a great deal of free labor during construction, but much of the help has come from former lifeguards as well.

Former lifeguard Tom Redwitz, now an Irvine Co. architect, drew up the plans in 1973 during the wintry months while he was away from the beach, at UC Berkeley. Ex-lifeguard Marty Madison showed up recently to do the electrical work. Vernie Gregg laid the cement.

“The good thing is they didn’t just sit around and bitch about it and say, city, where’s the money for our building,” said Lifeguard Lt. Mark Klosterman, who credited Dwinell with most of the effort. “Here’s a guy who said, OK, you’re short on money, we’re going to go out and build it ourselves. And that’s what happened.”