A Breed Apart : California Lifeguards Make Their Mark as Pop Culture Heroes

Lifeguards aren’t really men and women. They are gods, or the next best thing--symbols of every sybaritic thing that Los Angeles represents. They sit on their wooden towers of power squinting at the horizon and at the less-bronzed human beings who swarm at their feet. When they descend, it is not unusual for them to save a life.

The little-known history of this sun-kissed breed is the subject of a lecture today at Westchester’s Loyola Marymount University.

Like other subcultures, the men and women with peeling noses and killer sunglasses have a unique history, which will be recounted by Arthur Verge, an assistant professor of history at El Camino College in Torrance.

Verge, 36, knows whereof he speaks. He has been a lifeguard for 19 years and is the son of veteran Santa Monica lifeguard Arthur Verge Sr., who used to stare protectively at John F. Kennedy when he braved the waves in front of brother-in-law Peter Lawford’s home.

“I was crawling on the beach before I could walk,” recalled the younger Verge, who worked his way through graduate school at USC guarding local bathers. The Southern California lifeguard has become an American icon, Verge said. He realized just how universally recognized that image is during a recent trip to Denmark. He was carrying his lifeguard bag with him on a train when two Danish boys approached him and inquired, “Bay Watch? “

As Verge explained, the local lifeguard existed for almost a century before becoming the hero of that popular syndicated TV series. The local father of what Verge calls ocean water safety was George Freeth, brought to Southern California in 1907 from his native Hawaii by developer Henry Huntington.

Huntington’s many beachside properties included a plunge in Redondo Beach, and Freeth was hired to guard the huge saltwater pool. But, according to Verge, it was the half-Polynesian Freeth’s skill on a surfboard and his ocean rescues that made him the first lifeguard hero.

Freeth had an enormous impact on the Southland and ultimately on American pop culture, Verge said. Freeth and other Hawaiians had reintroduced surfing to the islands where it had been suppressed as pagan by the Mormon missionaries.

Besides teaching Angelenos how to hang ten, they also revolutionized beachwear. Before Freeth, local bathers wore terminally nerdy togs, including long pants and street shoes. Freeth and his fellow islanders popularized such seaside classics as Hawaiian shirts and sandals.

They also popularized a newly intimate relationship with the ocean, in which humans were as competent in the water as sea creatures. Before Freeth, Verge said, the locals “were not good water men.” Among Freeth’s achievements in the water was the singled-handed rescue of the entire crew of a Japanese fishing vessel, which sank in a storm. It earned Freeth a congressional medal of valor.

Verge speculates that Freeth, with his dark skin, may also be responsible for the now somewhat faded popularity of the tan.

Verge loves doing historical research about the lifesaving profession that he also loves: It’s much more pleasant than researching plagues, wars and political machinations. “As a historian, you get tired of reading and writing about all the negatives,” he said. But his commitment to history has not diminished his hunger for the beach. Verge recalled that when he was interviewed for his job at El Camino, a faculty member asked when he planned to hang up his rescue gear and give up his “young man’s game.” “I’ll never give it up,” he said. Later, several of his new colleagues quietly congratulated him.

His fellow lifeguards are like family, Verge said. They share remarkable physical skills, a passion for the ocean and the unique satisfaction that comes from saving lives.

Verge emphasizes the professionalism of lifeguards, but he also treasures their laid-back lifestyle. Lifeguards don’t like neckties, Verge said, and they think it is really important to be able to surf on a day when the waves seem to be calling you by name. And although he admits that they have great parties (in her day, Marilyn Monroe was a regular attendee), he wants to correct the base canard that lifeguards are, well, stupid.

Los Angeles County has 115 permanent lifeguards and 550 others who, like Verge, work part time, making it the largest such force in the world. At least 15 members of the lifeguard service have doctorates, including Verge and his father, a history professor at Santa Monica College. When they are not staffing their towers, some of the guards are attorneys and physicians as well as firefighters and Navy Seals. Last year, according to the service’s Jinx Wible, the seaside sentinels kept an eye on more than 58 million beach-goers and effected 11,729 rescues.

Not surprisingly, lifeguards have long had ties with the entertainment industry, Verge said. The studios quickly discovered that lifeguards were the perfect people to dive off ships in pirate movies, and so the guardians of the beaches were among the first stuntmen. But although glamour has always been part of the business, the major development in the field has been increasing professionalism, Verge said. In 1957 the lifeguard service was the first county institution to use CPR regularly--long before the Fire Department institutionalized it.

The faces behind the heavy-duty sunglasses have changed over the years. For a time, the service was all-white and all-male. Now minorities are actively recruited, and Verge was there when women joined the force in 1974.

In fact, Verge pointed out, slipping into historian mode, women first helped guard the beaches in the early 1940s, when World War II created a shortage of able-bodied men. While Rosie the Riveter worked in the defense plants, Louise the Lifeguard squinted out to sea.

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Verge will speak from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the McIntosh Center on the Westchester campus. The talk is part of the second annual Marie E. Northrop Lecture Series, sponsored by the Los Angeles City Historical Society. Tickets are $5 and are available at the door. For further information, call (310) 338-4536 or (213) 936-2912.