"You go out and rescue someone and you feel it immediately." 

OCEAN CITY -- On a typical morning, Warren Williams rolls toward a typical crisis: a boy with a sliver of Boardwalk the size of a Popsicle stick in his foot. 

Williams and his all-terrain vehicle chug north past the sand-sculpting evangelist. Past the guys with "drink 'til she's cute" T-shirts sleeping off last night's underage chugging. Past gaggles of seminude high school girls. 

Williams shakes his head: "They didn't look that way when I started out." 

When Williams started saving lives here, the Pendletones had just changed their name to the Beach Boys and released "Surfin' Safari" and television lifeguard David Hasselhoff of "Baywatch" was a schoolkid in Baltimore. 

The year was 1962. Lifeguarding in America has changed with the times. 

In the past decade, the profession has taken a beating. Teens are more career-minded, and their job options are greater; even fast-food joints offer benefits and signing bonuses. 

Some youths see lifesaving as more slackerly than studly. Add to that a growing concern over the health risks of lifeguarding -- exposure to the sun's rays, to hepatitis or AIDS in victims -- and exposure to lawsuits, and the result is a nationwide shortage of lifeguards. 

Furthermore, cutbacks in community swimming programs 20 years ago have eroded the stock of top swimmers. 

"We've seen, nationally, a decline in the people with the skills to do the job," said Chris Brewster, an officer with the United States Lifesaving Association and chief of the San Diego Lifeguard Service. 

The dearth of real-life Hasselhoffs has forced New York City to close pools and New Jersey to close beaches. 

In Maryland, state parks employ half the lifeguards they once did and are now telling patrons to swim at their own risk. 

"We've tried to get away from the lifeguard-as-a-babysitter atmosphere," said Bill Simmons, the state's waterfront management director and a ranger at Assateague Island State Park. "There are just not as many young folks interested in these jobs as there were 10, 15 or 20 years ago." 

Ocean City has bucked the trend with a pay raise (from $8.10 to $10.29 an hour) and heavy recruiting on the Internet and at college job fairs. 

And then there's trend-busting Warren Williams. 

At 61, he's Ocean City's oldest lifeguard, and, at 38 years and counting, is the longest-serving guard. During the week, he's an electrical engineer at NASA's rocket-launching Wallops Island Flight Facility near Chincoteague, Va. But every weekend and holiday during the summer, he patrols Ocean City's 10 miles of beach. He spends all his 26 vacation days working on the Beach Patrol. 

"Working on the Beach Patrol is his vacation," said Williams' wife, Lana, who met Warren on the Boardwalk the same year he started lifeguarding. 

Williams' legend grew when his son, Sean, joined him on the Beach Patrol for a 10-year stint, while Lana worked as a lifeguard at a nearby pool. Sean is now a chiropractor, and Lana is an educator. But Williams is still a lifeguard. 

"He's only ever missed one day of work, and that was his son's wedding," said Butch Arbin, captain of the Beach Patrol and a 28-year veteran. 

"And he would have missed that but his wife made him go." 

Another "surf rescue technician," as the city's guards are now officially known, pays Williams the top compliment: "The dude's still doing rescues." 

Williams has pulled more than 1,000 people from the surf -- 17 in one day in September, in the churning wake of Hurricane Dennis. One of those drifted out to sea as her family stood on the shore and watched. She had gone under twice by the time Williams reached her. She cried, "We're not going to make it," and he almost believed her. "I thought I was going to lose her," he said. 

None of Williams' near-drowning victims has died, although 12 people died of heart attacks, despite his efforts to resuscitate them. Of those he's pulled from the water, maybe half say thanks. Most people storm off -- "I'm fine, I'm fine" -- embarrassed at having to be saved by a man who is now a grandfather. 

With his perpetually bare feet, freckled skin and gray-dusted red hair, Williams doesn't look as if he's eligible for federal retirement benefits. His soothing voice has a slight Southern twang and a lilt of Southern California. 

Williams grew up in Berlin, near Ocean City. After a year in the Army, he was sitting on the Boardwalk in 1962 when two lifeguard officers walked past and asked him to try out. He was just hanging at the beach anyway, so why not get paid? An avid swimmer and runner, Williams passed the test easily. 

Later that year, he went to work for NASA and has balanced one job against the other ever since. He swims nightly to keep in shape, because he's far from ready to quit. He finds the rewards of his NASA job elusive, but as a lifeguard, "you go out and rescue someone and you feel it immediately." 

Ocean City's Beach Patrol was born in 1930. Until then, the Coast Guard had kept an eye on bathers. But when the crowds grew and started moving north along the beach, away from the Coast Guard tower, the mayor hired Edward Lee Carey to man the beach and then John Laws and then the Dukehart boys and then the Savage brothers, Huck and Cutie. 

In 1935, a lanky swimmer named Bob Craig joined the seven-man crew. Craig would stay 51 years and become an Ocean City legend. From 1946 to 1987, Craig served as captain of the beach patrol. He hired Warren Williams and his son and hundreds of others. He is still known about town as "the captain." 

"It's like my old bumper sticker used to say: Once a lifeguard, always a lifeguard," said Craig, 82, listening to his beloved jazz LPs in his bayfront home, where congratulatory letters from presidents and governors adorn the walls beside his wife's seascape paintings. 

Craig isn't sure how to describe what lured men like him and Williams to the beach each year. There's the obvious stuff, like the beauty of the ocean and the joy of working outdoors. 

But the job is often boring and thankless. Craig once saw a near-drowning victim slap the guard who pulled her from a riptide. But when you watch someone walk away who might otherwise have drowned, "nobody can ever take that away from you." 

Maybe, he thinks, it's the surprises. Winds, waves and the tide are steady, predictable. But people, who knows what depths of stupidity they'll plumb? 

Like the guy with the lost 7-year-old who was ready to drive back to Baltimore on a Sunday night and told Craig he'd call Tuesday to see if his son had turned up. "You think you've seen it all, and then..." Craig said. 

Williams knows he hasn't seen it all. When he started, machismo was a prime job requirement, what with all the fights and drinking at night. Now -- after women were admitted to the Beach Patrol in 1977 -- about 30 of the nearly 150 guards are female. All guards must know semaphore, a system of using flags to communicate with other guards. And they must know how to handle children, since an average of 75 kids are lost on the beach each summer day. 

Williams no longer sits in a guard chair. Since becoming a lieutenant, his duties are broader, more complicated. As a chair-sitter, he came to know every sandbar and, where the water is darker, the holes and deeps where the riptides lurk. Today, he trains new guards and patrols the beach on an ATV. 

The job can still surprise him. There was the umbrella shaft that impaled a girl's leg and the sand crab that made a home in a boy's ear canal. 

But he's still just a lifeguard, not a surgeon. He tries to explain that to the worried parents of the kid with the foot wound. Guards can't remove splinters, especially not 5-inchers. So he drives the boy to a nearby medical center. 

After that, Williams delivers an ACE bandage to a guard who heard a "pop" while hauling his 300-pound guard chair into position. Then another guard with an empty tube of sunblock radios Williams for a new tube "ASAP." 

"Kids now seem more concerned about their personal welfare," said Williams, who never used to worry about sunscreen and has had a few operations to remove potentially cancerous skin lesions. 

The guard in need of sun- block stands and waves as Williams approaches. It's Captain Craig's lanky, 21-year-old grandson, Christopher, Ocean City's first third-generation guard. He looks admiringly down from his chair at Williams, whom he's known his whole life, and says, "You keep me from burning, Warren." 
Originally published on Jun 15 2000