The Great Whitey Way: Lifeguard Racing Icon Craig Whitehead Still Plays Big Part in Avalon
This is a victory lap, a sipped beverage in the cool of the evening or a highlight-reel recollection for Craig Whitehead.
The 33-year veteran of the Avalon Beach Patrol, affectionately dubbed “Whitey” throughout the South Jersey lifeguard circuit, can view the big race month of August several ways.
He can recall winning its signature events – the Margate Memorials (Aug. 6 this year), along with the South Jersey Championships (Aug. 13) and the Hammer Row in Longport (Aug. 24) as an elite doubles rower. The Around-the-Island Row in North Wildwood, also on Aug. 24, bears his victorious signature.
Whitehead can consider Avalon’s Kerr Memorials, another August staple that was moved in recent years to July, as a memory for either month.
With another July event, he’s been a minister of philanthropy. Whitey has five wins in the 6-Mile Bay race, an Upper Township Beach Patrol event that has raised more than $150,000 for MS research.
Whitehead can smile about his novel stature on the lifeguard racing circuit that stretches from Cape May to Brigantine and has a rich tradition that dates back to 1924.
He’s one of the most versatile performers in this domain. Whitey has won short, medium and long races, prevailed in relative sprints and in marathons of 20-miles plus. He’s won on the ocean, in the bays and around Wildwood Island, triumphed among thousands of screaming spectators and in quiet areas with few fans.
Thirty years ago this month, he seized the first of three straight South Jersey titles, which changed his life and made him consider Avalon an Endless Summer haven.
He’s become a good administrator, too, growing from athlete to beach-patrol lieutenant along the way. Whitey is a mentor, a link to the next generation and someone who still performs well at age 50.
This is perfect for him. For decades, Whitehead has been able to stay at a party most people have to leave.
Whitey’s elite rowing buddies, the cream of the crop both here and in the Philadelphia region, were not able to remain guards because full-time jobs called them away years ago.
Whitey remained, because the physical-education teaching job in Philadelphia affords him the flexibility to work summers – and summer magic – here.
Whitey is in his element.
“I feel truly honored and blessed to be here,” Whitehead says. “It was right here in Avalon that I decided I wanted to always be down at the beaches in the summer. I have been able to do that, so I have no regrets at all.
“I am so happy to have all of it, the races, the work, and the relationships with people.”
The happiness spans several realms.
“The people in the Avalon Beach Patrol organization have been wonderful and taught me a lot,” he says. “That’s No. 1. The ocean is where I love to be and this job makes it possible for me to do that. That would be second. And there’s the boat, No. 3.
“That’s the best inspiration for me to get and stay in shape. Lifeguarding is not just a job, it’s a lifestyle. It enables me to stay in shape and to do what we have all been brought here to do – which is to look out for the public safety – better. The races and everything are wonderful, but in the end all of these things really help make you a better lifeguard.”
One thread throughout his campaign is Whitehead’s wife, Sharon. He credits her with giving him enough space to pursue his lifestyle, to the point of being home in Collingswood while he works summers here.
Mr. Everything
The Whitehead perspective depends upon where people notice his work.
Some dub him “Mr. August,” the month of his achievements on the circuit’s high-profile scene. They recall his three consecutive South Jersey championships. There is a Reggie Jackson reference, of course, even though the low-key Whitehead differs sharply from the flamboyant baseball Hall of Famer whose three 1977 World Series homers on three straight pitches earned him the Mr. October moniker.
To others, Whitey is Mr. Consistency. He’s always in shape. Whitey bicycles about five miles each way to work from Sea Isle City, where he’s happy to have recently purchased a condo. As a college student in Philadelphia, he bicycled 10 miles each way, per day, from Drexel Hill to Temple University.
Maybe he’s Mr. Longevity. Whitehead instructs young guards and helps veterans. He might even compete again for Avalon.
Or, when you add it up, he could be Mr. Everything.
Staying Connected
Whitey links generations, staying in touch with his friends and helping their kids, along with the next generation of guards. That continues his ties to John Glomb, another Avalon legend who made the U.S. national rowing team in 1993 and shared a World University Games gold medal.
“Whitey has won just about every race there is to win, multiple times and with different partners,” says Glomb, Whitehead’s longtime buddy and a singles champion the night Whitehead and Mike Cras won the doubles, propelling Avalon to a South Jerseys championship in 1991.
“But the victories don’t nearly define him,” Glomb adds. “He is more than a fierce competitor. He is a class act and a loyal friend. To be able to do what he has done for as long as he has in his career is something that should be celebrated.”
Glomb celebrates a bond spanning two eras with Whitehead. One involved their glory years, the other his children.
“Cras just sent me a picture of the day after the South Jerseys and Murray [Wolf, the captain] talking to us the next morning,” Glomb recalls. “It was roll call the day afterward. Murray called us up to the beach-house deck and acknowledged how we had just won the Jerseys. It was a tremendous feeling.
“All of us still stay in touch. I just saw Whitey the night of the Cape May Countys,” Glomb adds, regarding the first event of this campaign. “Here is Whitey mentoring the kids, giving tips to the doubles and the singles rowers before they went out for the race. It’s great to see him shifting from the competitor to the coaching mentor for the kids.”
Whitehead took that philosophy to a deep level for Glomb, his teammate and fellow lieutenant on the patrol decades earlier. Glomb had left the patrol, becoming a business icon as president and CEO of Philadelphia Insurance Companies, with more than 2,500 employees.
But turn the page. Glomb now has three sons on the Avalon patrol. Whitehead made Jack, then 16, his partner in the Around-the-Island Row two years ago.
“It takes a special person willing to hop in a boat with a 16-year-old, pull a 350-pound surf boat and do that for about three hours for something you are trying to win,” Glomb says. “Watching my son rowing with Craig Whitehead was a special treat.”
Cras: Three-peat Was Nearly Four
Cras took as much of the ride as possible with Whitehead, before the construction industry nabbed him in the mid-1990s. He was Whitey’s rowing teammate at Monsignor Bonner High School in Philadelphia and then Temple. They helped the Owls win a coveted Dad Vail Regatta after they had teamed up for three straight South Jersey titles.
Cras had a chance to go to the Henley Regatta in England in 1994. He chose to seek an unprecedented fourth title with Whitehead, and they almost made it.
“Man, we just missed,” Cras says. “You know, being on the patrol then was the time of my life. If Craig and I weren’t winning everything, we were in every race.
“Craig and I are both easy-going. That’s a good thing, too. You need to want to be with the person you’re with or you are never going to row well together. We both loved that challenge; you have two guys with a 350-pound boat knowing how to move it the most efficient way possible.
“I’ll never forget the night in ’93 when we won our third in a row. The people on the beach were screaming ‘Three-Peat’ because the Bulls had just done that in the NBA. The feeling was unbelievable. And he nearly got the fourth one. That would have been something.”
It still would be. No doubles crew has ever won four straight South Jerseys. Cras and Whitehead may have come the closest.
Whitehead, interestingly, believes it’s the best performance he ever gave. The pair devoted an entire year aiming for this event and they improved over the years they had won it. But they were nosed out by Ocean City’s Rob Garbutt and Ron Kirk.
The Murray Wolf Vantage Point
Murray Wolf watched Whitehead progress through the years. He saw early on that Whitey would not be denied in competition.
“Craig is a physical-education teacher and he walks the walk,” says Wolf, the recently retired Avalon Beach Patrol captain and chief.
“He is always in the water, always helping someone row or he is practicing. That’s what it takes to be a great competitor, which he is. And whenever we had a long, tough rescue, he found a way to get it in. He was always on top of it.
“Craig is also a really good person; he gets along with everybody.”
Matt Wolf: Full-Circle Journey
“It is impossible to quantify in words what Craig has meant to our beach patrol,” new Avalon Beach Patrol chief Matt Wolf says. “For all of his success, he is an unassuming, humble guy. He is very easy to root for. He has friends all over South Jersey. When you go around the racing circuit, everybody knows him. He is very likable.”
From his youth to the new administrative role guiding a staff of roughly 100 guards, Wolf savors Whitehead’s role, phase by phase.
It began when Wolf was 8 years old, watching Whitehead and Cras win South Jersey titles. Wolf stood on the Avalon beach, trying to cheer them home.
Fast-forward a few years, and he’s a patrol rookie.
“When I was 14 years old, I saw him as a rock star,” Wolf says. “This was a guy willing to help me, show me the proper technique and teach me to navigate a course away from where you are looking. He was uplifting. If Craig says you are doing a good job handling the boat, it gives you a lot of confidence.”
Wolf later saw Whitehead bring out the best in colleagues. He had scores of successful partners: Cras, Glomb, Erich and Matt Wolf, and Shane McGrath, among others.
“What’s really interesting, besides his own success, is what he has accomplished with other rowers,” Matt Wolf says. “It’s no accident that anybody who’s had success in our boats for the last 30 years has ridden with Craig Whitehead.”
Wolf gained a satisfying full-circle experience with Whitehead in 2015. As Wolf helped give Avalon its first team title since 1992, there on the shores were the idols he’d once cheered for, Cras and Whitehead. And they were cheering for him.
When Wolf became the patrol chief this year, he saw one more side of Whitey.
“He was one of the first guys I called and said, ‘I hope you want to be back; I want you back here with me,’ ” Wolf recalls. “I can’t begin to tell you the number of hours he has spent here unpaid, not on the clock.
“Craig just began something here this year, he called it the Solstice Row, which we did on the longest day of the year in June. We had 13 boats, all riding through town in competition, and the people on the docks waving as the boats went by. He was an organizer.”
August once was the month of Whitehead’s big stage. It remains a source of fond memories, while he remains on the job, playing varied roles.
Ultimately, that might be the best part of August for Craig Whitehead.
It doesn’t have to mean yesterday.
