LOOKING BACK

Young Chang

You would think the first guardian of lives in Newport Beach would be

better documented.

Jim Felton’s history “Newport Beach: The First Century, 1888-1988,”

tells us his name was Frank Sharps. He was part of a Newport Beach

pioneer family that arrived in Southern California via wagon in 1869.

They moved to Newport in 1892 and sometime after that Sharps became the

city’s first lifeguard. His sister Ethel was the city’s first telephone

operator.

But that’s about all that’s known about Sharps. How long he held the

position of lifeguard and what he did after he left the guarding business

is at the moment a mystery of history.

That doesn’t mean all the early lifeguards are similarly forgotten.

After all, this is a beach town. Al Irwin, a retired lifeguard who lives

in Newport Beach, remembers one in particular. Blanchard Beatt was hired

in 1925 as one of the city’s first paid lifeguards. He earned about $100

a month and worked for eight years under Antar Deraga, who organized the

Balboa Red Cross Life Saving Corps.

Back then, lifeguards were considered almost like a subsidiary of the

fire department, even though they weren’t really part of the fire

department, said Lois Irwin, Al Irwin’s wife.

“In the summer the boys all came together, the city appointed a head

of the group and off they went,” she said. “They did their job.”

The men reported to the city manager. People with experience as

lifeguards and academic backgrounds were hired to handle to

administrative duties.

Eventually the lifeguards did become a part of the fire department.

Then in the late ‘50s, lifeguards became part of the city’s marine

department, but in 1996 they merged once again with the fire department.

One noteworthy development for Newport Beach lifeguards, reported in a

department history titled “The Tide Has Changed,” by Patrica Domecq, was

the city’s 1913 acquisition of Pulmotors, a type of emergency ventilator.

Dr. Lowell C. Frost of Los Angeles lost members of his family in a

drowning because, at the time, adequate equipment did not exist to help

resuscitate them. To prevent that from happening again, Frost presented

the city with the ventilators. He also purchased cork ring buoys to help

with rescues.

Al Irwin became a lifeguard in 1932. He remembers being paid 50 cents

an hour, making $88 a month. He became captain in 1936 and then earned

$100 a month.

“The first day I worked for the lifeguard department, there was a

drowning at the Santa Ana River Bay jetty and I recovered three bodies,”

the 83-year-old said. “I was paid $2 for half a day’s work.”

Now tower lifeguards make $12.25 an hour.

* Do you know of a person, place or event that deserves a historical

Look Back? Let us know. Contact Young Chang by fax at (949) 646-4170;

e-mail at [email protected]; or mail her at c/o Daily Pilot, 330 W.

Bay St., Costa Mesa, CA 92627.