SOME MEMORIES OF AN OLD SAN CLEMENTE LIFEGUARD - 40’S & ‘50’S

 

Hi my name is Dave Tansey. I came to San Clemente in 1941 and entered the eighth grade at a little school near the north end of town.  I remember it was across the street from the beautiful small park. I doubt that it's still there. I went to San Juan Capistrano High School (We didn't have a San Clemente high school then. We all rode the school bus the 8 miles to Capistrano everyday.) I graduated from Capo in 1946 and I believe started life guarding around the summer of 1946.

 

 As I ramble through my memories let me begin by saying that if other old-timers read this and have a different recollection of names and dates they may well be right. I didn't keep records. I'm just an old fellow remembering some of the highlights of those years. And I offer this with full respect not only to the old timers but to the younger and newer generations of guards. I know I speak for many of the old-timers when I say to modern guards---you are better trained than we were, have much better equipment, are probably stronger swimmers than most of us and are, I'm sure, a lot better looking.

 

 You may find it necessary to edit my comments because they will no doubt be very long and perhaps a touch incoherent but I would ask that if you edit it, edit the stories and the not too interesting stuff. I hope you will not cut out any of the names for they are the ones who deserve to be remembered. I understand these names are of little importance to most folks but for those still wistfully looking at the surf, or for their children; they will be pleased to know they made a difference.

 

 I know this is your 75th anniversary of the San Clemente Lifeguard Service and you probably have records that do go back that far but I only remember from around the early 1940s. Somewhere in that time it seems to me Don Divel kept folks out of trouble under the pier. It was probably during 1944 or’45 when Marv Crummer was Captain of the Guards.  Opie (his real name was Tommy Wert) was the longtime guard; gosh, I don't know how long he was on those beaches but it was a longtime. He was an English teacher at Orange Coast College. I'm sure he could have been Captain but he preferred to leave as often as he could and go to San Onofre to surf. You notice I keep referring to Captain. I understand you now have lifeguard Chiefs but in those days the only chief was Art Danari, Chief of Police --- the guard captain reported to him. I became Captain of the Guards when Marv Crummer moved on to bigger and better things. (I'm not sure there is anything bigger and better than the ocean lifeguard.) The guards on regular duty during that era were Hal Sachs (he was our Lt. He could have been anything he wanted to be.), Jerry Martin, Terry DeWolfe and me. This group was added to on weekends and holidays, for in those days we also guarded San Clemente State Park, Cottons Point, Doheny State Park and the Depot, only on special days. The Depot referred to the old train station which was on the beach behind the San Clemente swimming pool at the north end of town. We usually had a guard on the pier and one on each side of the pier. In later years, we covered Doheny and San Clemente Park everyday. There was an advantage to working Doheny – fresh Abaloni for dinner.  I read a newspaper article from 1951, which indicated that during that full season we made 109 rescues and assists and gave first aid or emergency treatment to 155 people. I'm sure that by today's standards that's nothing compared to what the modern guard does but I say, somewhat defensively, remember we only had three to five of us most the time covering from Doheny to San Clemente Park.

 

We did have our moments to remember. Art Daneri was a great Chief of Police. He did all he could to get us equipment (that means we had swim fins, no boats… no jet skis… no jeeps.) If my memory serves me right we earned $.50 an hour - four dollars a day. (Don't laugh. Remember the 1940’s --- my mother worked as a waitress 48 to 60 hours a week at Woody's White House Cafe on El Camino (the Santa Fe bus stop) or the Seashore café (the Greyhound bus stop) for $18 dollars a week plus tips.) Back to Chief Daneri… he insisted that we submit records of everything we did. I remember him saying “If you want me to go to the City Council and get you a raise you have to give me some evidence that you're doing some good.” So reluctantly we got the names of as many as we could that we helped in the water or put a Band-Aid on and submitted them to the Chief. I do recall him coming to the beach around 1949 (maybe it was ‘50 or maybe it was ’48) to tell us that the 134 rescues and assists we had on that Fourth of July were more than any lifeguard service on that day from San Diego to Santa Barbara and that included all the big ones like Huntington, LA County, Santa Monica etc... Not bad for four to seven of us for that entire span of beach from Doheny to Cottons Point. By the way if one took a day off, which was rare, we had three of us instead of four. We tried to work seven days a week, after all that was another $4.00.

 

 There were some sad stories, of course. I remember early in my years as a guard, as soon as school opened all guards were laid off. The city was small, the budget was tight and there was no money for a guard. I remember talking to the Chief and saying that it was beautiful weather and although school would be starting would it not be wise to put at least one guard at the pier, just in case, and he agreed but the city just couldn't afford it. We had never had a drowning while a guard was on duty from those early days of Don Divel to Marv Crummer and Opie until that time.  I am well aware that a lot of that was luck, there are bound to be losses in a lifeguard service but it was still the situation at that time. Until the first Monday after school started, with no guard on duty, a young girl got trapped under the pier and drowned in a hole at the base of a piling. Many of us had feelings of guilt because the truth is we probably went surfing at San Onofre or the Trestle and could just have easily been at the pier on our own time.

 

 In those days our lifeguard headquarters was a storage room underneath the entrance to the pier. I’m sure you have much better now. At first, we had one tower on the busy side of the pier, a year later we got a second tower on the other side of the pier, and in later years a tower at Doheny, I think. Following my time as Captain, Jerry Martin became Captain of the Guards. Jerry was always a good guard and a good captain. Hal Sachs has pointed out to me that before Jerry became captain we just wore regular swim trunks. Jerry was able to get   regular red uniforms with the lifeguard patch and, I think, a raise in pay. Jerry was very organized and did a lot to advance the lifeguard service. Toward the end of our time,

many who I remember as “kids on the beach”, became outstanding guards – Bobby Driscoll, Vince Nelson, Jim Severson, Dave Johnson. I don’t know if Richard Eyer ever guarded but

 if not, he could have … he thrived on the beach.

 

I also want to give credit to those guards that filled in on weekends and holidays. I'll probably get mixed up as to which ones were really paid and which ones just did it for the love of the sport but they all deserve recognition. My apology to any that I forget; my kids tell me I'm a week older than dirt and the memory just doesn't serve me as well as I wish but here goes. Before all of these “guards” there was Loren Harrison, a professional abalone diver, one of the early board builders. I believe Loren surfed with the Duke here and in Hawaii. Years later I saw him surfing in a television commercial for a major company. I hope they paid him a bunch. I remember Jimmy Sutton, Minor Harkness, Ben Yarnel, Jim Klien, Bill Vetter (I believe he became a big wheel in the surfing club. Didn’t his son John become president of the club?), Jim Gilloon (the best board builder and shaper Hobie ever had), Dick Bruton (he still has one of the original Loren Harrison built boards. He bought it in 1945; it was built in the late ‘30’s. It is a hollow, plywood board with a redwood nose and a square tail. It has a cork for draining the water. When it loaded up, it weighed 140 lbs, that’s more than Dick weighed ), Mike McManus, Don Murray, Ken Cates (a great athlete, a multi- time participant in the famous Iron Man Race), “Viking” (Niels Jenson), “Pop” and his silver ‘36 Ford, Ron Drummond (the biggest man to ever surf a canoe. He took tourists for a ride in his canoe; of course you slow a canoe down or speed it up when you are in a wave, the same as you do a board. He would tell the folks to move forward or back but they would freeze. He finally gave up taking them and instead took his large dog. When we asked him why, he said, “When I tell the dog to go forward, he does; when I tell him to go backward, he does.”),  Jack McManus--- one of the finest men any of us would have the privilege of knowing. (Jack had a 14’ Kook Box, a huge hollow plywood paddle board, and he would float outside the surf line at Doheny at the river mouth and pick up tourists as the river would carry them out, so I guess we did have some equipment if we count the kook box.),  John Severson (we all know how famous he became. I think he was an English teacher at Laguna High before he published his first issue of Surfer Magazine. He was a fine surfer and water man. We knew that he would be, just watching him as a kid on an inflated mat.)

 

Speaking of Sutton, Yarnell or Harkness, I can’t remember which one. We sent one of them to the Depot on one of the busy weekends or holidays. We gave him a can buoy. Now remember in those days our can buoys were real cans made of sheet metal about 40” high and 8” across. They were heavy and this one leaked. The guard was to stand it in the sand so folks would know a guard was there but “don’t take it in the water”. There was a pay phone at the Depot we told him to call us if he got busy – we would try to send someone to help. The day went by and we heard nothing and assumed all was well. About 6:00 pm, he came dragging in (the more I think of it, the more I think it was Sutton) and he had made fourteen real rescues, a large group from Iowa showed up--- well you can guess the rest. We asked why he didn’t call - his response, “If I had left to call they would have drowned.” We asked where the can was – his response, “You were right, it sank” So much for our modern equipment.

 

I don’t know what your records show but I can tell you the first San Clemente Tournament of Sports was held in 1950 plus or minus a year or two. It was a big event for that little town. They said it would be an annual event but I can’t remember it occurring again while I was there. They had athletes from all over coming for lots of different events. They had a rough water swim scheduled to be around the pier. The folks who were running the program had lifeguards from all over Southern California coming to swim and they wanted someone from our local group to enter. Of course, the ones that should have entered were Hal or Jerry or Terry (he was a fast swimmer and an excellent guard but he preferred to stay in his tower bundled up with his blanket or sweat shirt, cap, dark glasses and zinc oxide.) Any of the local kids would have been a fine representative but none were into that stuff.  Finally, they persuaded one of the guards to enter with the idea that he would just swim it easy and not worry about it… maybe just swim with them to the end of the pier and go up the ladder. Would you believe it, the silly guy won the thing. Not because he was a great swimmer, he wasn't, but he did know the beach and the currents and the surf. We have often said the best ocean guards are those that are good water people not necessarily the fastest swimmers. So there he was being given the first San Clemente Rough Water Swim Trophy by a movie star. I think her name was Arleen Dahl, or was it Eve Arden? She played Our Miss Brooks in the movies. That’s before most of those reading this were a twinkle in anyone’s eye. I’m told he may still have the trophy tucked in boxes of junk under his house. His win did surprise everyone especially the guards from all those other beaches.

 

I'm sure that we would all agree the best guards are those that make it look easy. They bring someone in without anyone on shore ever knowing it was a rescue –no heroics.  I remember a day on the pier during large surf when I and another guard watched a hapless young Marine from Camp Pendleton being pulled towards the pier. When it became clear he would need help, my partner handed me his glasses and his cap and said, “It’s my turn” and off he went. It was low tide and the pier barnacles were well exposed -- razor sharp as we all know. He worked the fellow through the pier keeping himself between the swimmer and the barnacles. When he brought him to the other side he worked him close enough to shore so he could make it on his own. Anyone watching would not have known that it was a rescue. The young Marine walked up on shore with no embarrassment and the guard simply swam to the end of the pier and came up the ladder -- that's what we would call a good rescue.

 

There were, of course, times when we looked just plain dumb. I remember a new young guard who had never worked a pier before getting real excited as he saw a youngster, he thought, being pulled toward the pier. Without thinking further he stepped up on the rail and stepped off. We all know that if you must jump into shallow water you of course time it to hit the top of the swell or wave. Well, our beginning friend either didn't know that or just missed, as he hit the water and the sand, both of his swim fins split up the middle and the back and floated to the surface. He stood up in knee-deep water just in time to watch the little boy walk up on shore ---sometimes you do learn things the hard way.

 

There were local kids like Gene and Bill Ayer, They went to Stanford and graduated as engineers. (Their dad was with Ole Hanson when San Clemente was founded. I think he laid out the whole city.) Jim and John Molitor, Dale Weatherholt, the Haven kids (their family had a large ranch, I believe they grew more varieties of tomatoes than we thought existed - it didn’t give them much time for the beach), Paul Lesser, Bobby Lashbrook, Norm Veesart,  Keith Roberts, Houston Thompson (a better friend you couldn’t have), Don Klaasen ( Wow! what an athlete), the Chade kids,(didn’t their folks have a store or restaurant at Capistrano beach?), Don Hansen (I think he was part of the famous Ole Hanson clan – gosh I’m not sure), Jack and Ed Driscoll, Dick Glover, Ralph “painless” Parker (I believe he later shaped for Hobie and built boards in his back yard. I’ll have to ask Jim Gilloon he will know,) Bill Taylor, Larry Bucheim (he was from Capo), Melvin Wood (his dad was a real, honest- to- goodness cowboy, who had a great effect on my life), Jim Bill Ames, Bud Voykovic (a really good mechanic, I think I still owe him for keeping my first car, a ’29 mdl “A”  Ford, running. He was always working and couldn’t make it to the beach as often as he wanted to.)  Ted Casad and Bill Morehouse (these two I’m sure were geniuses Bill built a Tram strung on cables across a San Clemente canyon), Leonard Goodwin, Gerald Yorba, Bob Heywood, (I think his dad had the only grocery store in town. If my memory serves me right, it was on Del Mar next to the alley. Am I correct in remembering that right near his store on the corner of Del Mar and El Camino was Harrisons Drug Store where we would all gather. They had a real soda fountain and would make “real” malts and phosphates of any flavor- my favorite was lime), Bob Scofield, (who, I believe turned out to be quite an athlete for old Capo High during his senior year.) Bob Hartley, (I think he got my horse Skeeter when I left for UC Davis,) Bob Carrick and Jack Driscoll (they used to ride their horses to the beach and tie them near the guard tower. I couldn’t say much because I did the same), the Llamas kids, way too many to list, but Freddie was a good friend. When we were Juniors, we went to Tijuana for three days looking for his dad -- who by the way came home the day we went there. Joe was younger than us but a great kid. I’ll bet he is still liked by everyone.  During the winter, after sports (I wasn’t much of an athlete but the beauty of a small school was we all got to play. In fact we had to play so the school could field a team.) I would ride the late bus home, get off with Fred, and Mama Llamas would feed me as part of the family. My favorite was homemade tortillas, beans, rice and pork, and great salsa. They raised their own pigs, gosh, the food was so good. I would then walk to Reeves Rubber Factory and work the swing shift as a press man, making, on one set of presses, parts for P38 fighter planes and on another set I made swim fins. I believe Dick Bruton and Carmen Reyes worked there in following years. At midnight, I walked back to Freddie’s. Mama always left out “leftovers” and a glass of cold milk, sometimes it was goat milk- it was great! I would sleep on their couch, then in the morning we would all catch the school bus. On Friday night after my shift, I would walk home to the Seven Palms Motel. My mom and I lived there in a rather quaint re-modeled garage. It was across El Camino from the Divel funeral parlor. That way I could be home for the weekend. Who could have asked for a better way to grow up.  Any of these kids I have remembered could have been regular lifeguards. (Well maybe not all of them but I just couldn’t leave them out.)  I’m sure there were many others and perhaps someone reading this will recall a few that can be added, for they deserve to be remembered.

 

All of us were just 14 to18 years old. (In those days we were called boys and girls.) There were no women lifeguards, society had just not yet matured enough. There should have been, for many were every bit the equal in the water to the guys and they were always there to support our work. I remember a guard pulling a child out of a hole who was immediately grabbed by one of the girls, wiped off, made to laugh, given a lecture about holes and safety, and returned to his mother. Some were fine body surfers and would astound the tourists by body surfing through the pilings of the pier. There were very few, if any, women surfers in those days. Remember, many of our boards were solid redwood or solid mahogany…very long, very wide, very thick and ungodly heavy....and some would say not a lot of fun.

 

Simmons was experimenting with a foam board covered with plywood and eventually fiberglass. Hobie was doing things in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. I believe I got my first Hobie around then and my second Hobie was about 1950 or ’51. It still has fiberglass patches on it for those many times when it didn't quite make it through the pier. Pete Nobel, a football coach at Monterey High has it now. He still actively surfs in the Santa Cruz, Monterey area and is a great guy.  I let him have it because he will someday have it on display. He has a fine collection. I was honored that he wanted to preserve it. It would be fun if the new San Clemente Museum could borrow it and show it, even temporarily. I know they have many more important boards to display, but this board has such a history of San Clemente, Doheny, Cottons Point, Dana, and the Trestle. Perhaps excerpts of what I’m writing could accompany the board. It might be of interest, especially to the old timers.

 

In those days, the Trestle beach was patrolled by Camp Pendleton Marines. It was government property and being there was strictly forbidden but that didn’t stop us.

They fired over our heads and if you lost your board you had to go to the M.P. headquarters and plead for it – they always gave it back.  I think we were their form of recreation.

 

 Mentioning Dana reminded me, before they built the breakwater, we surfed over a huge reef. In the winter, unless the tide was right, you had to ride high in the wave to be sure you could clear the reef and it was a long way to shore on a cold winter day. Dana on a big day was scary, at least to me. Many of the folks I've mentioned were great surfers, I was not, but I loved it. As we get older our stories get longer, and the waves get bigger and steeper, and the curls curl even more.

 

By the way, speaking of the pier, to my knowledge the very first person to ride a board through the pier was Hal Sachs. I'm sure now all the little kids that surf with smaller boards have no problem going through the pier but please remember we didn't have those kinds of boards. Going through the pier with our boards was like navigating the Titanic. Many of the piers up and down the coast were surfed because their pilings were much further apart and the stringer rafters were much higher up, but Hal thought he could really do it and he did and then he convinced most of those I mentioned above that they could do it to and they did. I know I’m rambling but when you get to be a week older than dirt you get to ramble.

 

Soooo, speaking of Hal, he was known as Uncle Hal by all the kids on the beach, and all of us. He won the Huntington Tandem in 1969 and 1970.  I believe the only person to win it two years in a row. He also was in the Duke in 1971 and believe it or not, ended his contest career in 1981 at the Makaha. He went to U.S.F., played center, linebacker and place kicker for their famous team which was the basis for the book, “Undefeated, Untied and Uninvited”. That year they had defeated the great teams of the era but were uninvited to a bowl game. Many from that team went on to become professional greats. Hal was contracted to join the Cleveland Browns had he not gone in the service. He recently was awarded an Honorary Doctorate for his contribution to that University.

 

 My gosh! I did digress. Where was I, oh yes. I was talking about the girls. At the risk of offending someone or missing some of the great beach girls, here goes: Betty Jo Cooper, Mary & Lois Driscoll, Diane DeWolfe (she became an attorney) Joan Molitor, Barbara McManus (and her mother Ma McManus, a mother to all of us. She and Jack later built a home right on the beach at Capistrano Beach.), the Pingree sisters Bev and Barb,( I learned to drive a small DC2 tractor working on their ranch between lifeguard seasons), Rose Marie Ayer, Marilyn Klaasen, Elberta Coffey, Anna Mae Ames, and the Parker sisters – Shirley, Doris and Norma,  Jane & Wendy Dickey, Cynthia Taylor (I believe her dad had the local pharmacy), Barbara Lesser (her mother made the best hot pickles), Bonna Ray, Doris Heywood , (the first girl to jump off the boom at the end of the pier. The boom was about 12’ above the pier which made that first step… Wow!  It was used to lift boats out of the water. The spooky part, and actually very dangerous by anyone’s definition, was climbing to the top. If a bit wet, it was treacherous. One had to balance at the top on a 12”round plate before jumping), Joan & Marcia Jensch (talk about guts, Marcia walked out on the “under the pier rafters” on a big day, balanced herself and took a picture of Hal surfing through the pier on a board we affectionately called the splinter. (One of the early balsa boards with redwood rails-varnished-no fiberglass. It had hit the pilings so often all of the front balsa was gone so the nose was U shaped with only the rails extending.) I don’t suppose a good guard would have let her do that but knowing us, we probably applauded her.

 

As you can tell we were able, for the locals at least, to run a bit of a looser ship. After all they were as good in the water as we were. It was not unusual for a little one, I guess 8 or 10 years old, to ask the guard, “Can I jump?” The Guard picked him up, put him on the rail and away he would go. The guard would watch to be sure all was well as he navigated through to the other side of the pier and body surfed to shore. I suppose now someone would be in big trouble for that. (We did have to become a bit more formal in later years.) Fishermen coming in from the live bait boats often had far too much to drink. They would see kids leaping off the rail and thought they could do it. On occasion, the guards would go in after fully clothed drunk fishermen. So, yes, we eventually had to stop the practice of letting everybody jump off the pier ---at least during the busy times of the day.

The most famous board we had on the beach in those days (except for Jack’s Kook Box) was a board shaped by Joe Quig. He was from the Santa Monica/ Malibu area and had shaped a board for Darylyn Zanuck. She was the daughter of the famous movie producer Darryl Zanuck (which most of the readers may never have heard of.) It was the first of the all balsa boards. It may have had redwood rails, I’ve forgotten. It was one of the early scoop noses. What a scoop. You couldn't pearl it on the steepest of waves. It was very wide, very flat. I think about 10’6’ or 11’ and light for those days. I know the kids today would be Embarrassed to be seen on it. Everyone on the beach learned to surf on that board. Without it, I would have been landlocked. Darylyn camped at Doheny. We always admired that because we assumed she was very wealthy and could have stayed in a pretty ritzy place, although come to think of it, I don't think we had any ritzy places. One year when she left, she suggested I buy the board. She thought it should stay on the beach. I believe I paid her four payments of ten dollars each for a total of $40. When I finally left the beach, I left it there and assume lots of kids enjoyed it for years. Wow! We never dreamed something like that would be a collector's item. If I could find Darylyn today I would like to thank her for being a one of our Doheny pals.

 I can’t close without remembering Buddy Gable. He wasn’t a lifeguard. I don’t even know if he could swim. He had the hamburger stand at the beginning of the pier. He took care of the guards and every kid on the beach. He was our counselor. He kept us in line if we started to stray (every one needs someone like that). To this day I have yet to taste a better hamburger than his… especially, on a cold and stormy day.  At the end of the season, Bud would have a party for all of us. He would sell anything he had left over at his cost (he never wanted to make money off of us.) Well, there was an old, floppy eared dog that used to hang around the pier. I don’t know who it belonged to, if anyone. We called him “Grant.” That dog loved Don Klaasen and the feeling was mutual. If the dog was on the pier and Don was in the water and Don called the dog, it would jump off the pier and swim to shore with Don. We never saw anything like it. At the end of the season, Don bought a whole carton of mint patties from Buddy and “Grant” ate every last one – well, that dog pooped for a week.

PLEASE, if you don’t see your name above or the name of someone that should be here, add it. I’m doing all this from memory, with help from Hal and as I’ve said, our old memories sometimes slip.

 

A number of years ago I was speaking at a convention. (I am one of those motivational speaker guys, I’m old but I clean up real good.) The person introducing me noted in my background that “a hundred years ago I had been a lifeguard.”  (Of course I wrote the introduction and I’m very proud to have been a guard.) When I completed the presentation, a fellow approached me and asked, “Which one?” I said, “Which one what?” He said, “Ocean or pool?” I said, “ Ocean.” and he said, “Never forget you’re part of a very special group.” That was Tim McNulty, who had been a member of the Los Angeles ocean lifeguards, as his father had been. Tim’s son is currently the head of one of the Bay Watch Teams for LA county guards and his son is married to an LA lifeguard. How’s that for family involvement, it reminds me of the Driscolls and the Seversons. He mentioned such names as Pete Peterson, Tommy Zahn and others, also of that era.)  From that time on, including today, my introduction says Ocean Lifeguard. I respect our pool friends but I'm sure glad I spent my time on the beach.  As my friend said, “Never forget you are a very special member of a very special group.”

 

The lifeguards of that era, as do modern lifeguards, went on to do many things. Many lettered in varsity sports from rugby & football, to swimming & gymnastics, to track & crew, at different colleges and universities throughout the country.  Many received their bachelors, and masters, and a few their doctoral degrees. Some became lawyers and doctors, and engineers; some went into government service in far away lands. Some became coaches, teachers, school principals and school superintendents, firemen, policemen and many, I am sure, opened their own businesses - ranging from the insurance world, to the auto and RV industry, to construction. Others went into trades and professions too many to mention. A few, I believe remained lifetime lifeguards somewhere in the world.  Most have raised fine families with, perhaps, a few sons and daughters following the lifeguard path. As with any group, I suppose there are a few that took a different direction but from my experience I can say that while they worked the beach they did some great things and will forever be a member of “that very special group.”

 

Wow! That’s enough rambling from an Ol’ Beach Bum. I, as all guards do, have a lot more stories but I won’t try your patience any longer. My goal was to give you a flavor of the beach culture and the culture of San Clemente during those years.

 

                 Please share this with anyone that might be a bit interested.

 

On behalf of all those we have mentioned above and those we have     missed…

                                              Congratulations to all of your guards and your Big Event …

            

                                                Keep Doing Great Things!

                                              

                                                                             Dave and Rosie Tansey

 

July 21, 2006