The King of the Beach: The Seven Mile Beach's Guy Gargan Has Been Covering Lifeguard Races for Five Decades
Guy Gargan chuckles, assessing the “The King of the Beach” moniker applied to him in the lifeguard-racing community.
“It’s funny to think about it,” he laughs, “because I can’t really swim, run or handle a boat.”
No, but the Press of Atlantic City sportswriter, raised in Avalon and Stone Harbor, owns a rare media distinction. Since the 1980s, Gargan has possibly covered more lifeguard races than anyone in the world.
It’s an unofficial crown, as there are no statistics formally designating this. Yet since 1983, part-time, and from 1992-2019, as the newspaper’s chief correspondent, Gargan has chronicled nearly 600 live events. Newspapers usually spread coverage among different reporters, making it rare for one person to attain Gargan’s level of lifeguard-race coverage.
Gargan does not have an exact tally, just the knowledge of a 17-race average over 28 full-time years and perhaps 10 for each part-time year.
Those numbers don’t include at least a couple hundred additional features, race previews, or wrap-up stories he has written from the office for events he wasn’t attending.
The next live race will bring him lifeguard coverage in five decades.
“It’s interesting when you look at it from that perspective,” Gargan says. “Lifeguard-race coverage is really enjoyable work and just as exciting as professional sports [which he also has covered]. It has the same intensity and yet it is personalized. The pro sporting events have the stands and the buildings you have to play in.
“But in lifeguard racing, the fans are right around the athletes. They know them as friends. Patrols have rivalries. Towns have rivalries. The patrols have great athletes. Many have been tremendous high-school and college swimmers and rowers.”
Gargan doesn’t list favorite events or athletes for fear of leaving people out. He remembers friendships with the athletes and the yearly renewal of a unique sport.
But his tenure is really a portrait, painted across decades of the circuit’s top summer events. It’s a collection of South Jersey Championships, Kerr Memorials, Beschen-Callahans and the Upper Township 6-Mile Bay Race. Or the Dutch Hoffmans, Margate Memorials and Atlantic City Lifeguard Classic. Event by event, year by year. A string of pearls.
Gargan’s career has stretched long enough to incorporate the rise of women’s races and the inclusion of Long Beach Island in coverage.
“Guy Gargan is synonymous with lifeguard racing,” says Avalon Beach Patrol and South Jerseys championship rower Erich Wolf, one of many athletes Gargan chronicled from youth into their midlife years. “He’s a fixture at the beach. It’s great to see him on the job.”
“He’s done a lot of great work throughout the years,” adds his father Murray Wolf, the Avalon Beach Patrol captain and one of the few lifeguard officials to predate Gargan. Wolf goes back to 1967.
“Guy is very professional and fair with everyone,” says Stone Harbor Beach Patrol captain Sandy Bosacco. “I like how he gives people a shout-out, even those who are not the superstars. It means a lot to them.”
Gargan’s consistent presence extends to his reporting. Races usually end by 8:30 p.m., enabling him to return to the office to write the story. That’s how he’s done it since the 1980s.
Gargan’s presence on the beach is no surprise. What’s unusual is that his life covers distinct personal segments of history. The whole package will surprise those who know him in just one area.
Gargan the Boxer
Local residents might not know he was an accomplished professional boxer in a demanding era. Gargan fought from 1973-79, amassing a record of 11 wins, four losses and five draws.
Television exposure was limited and fighters had to face tough opponents almost all the time.
Gargan fought in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall, in Scranton, at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby and the Philadelphia Spectrum.
Guy said he thought he looked like Sylvester Stallone, a nice comparison when the “Rocky” movie Stallone starred in won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1976. But the air later came out of that balloon.
“Many years have gone by since my boxing career, and a couple of years ago a woman told me she thought I looked like ‘that movie star,’ ” he recalls. “I was happy at first, but then she said, “You look like ... Steve Martin.”
The Flip Side
Many South Jersey residents know of Gargan’s boxing exploits, followed by a journalism career.
What they don’t know are his Seven Mile Beach roots.
“I lived in both towns,” he says proudly.
Gargan resided on 95th Street in Stone Harbor from 1959-61 and in Avalon from 1962-64 and 1968-70. In Avalon, he lived catty-corner to Hoy’s on 28th Street and later on the beach block on 29th Street, overlooking the ocean.
“Avalon and Stone Harbor were great places to grow up,” he says. “It seemed like I made a million friends.”
Fortunately, he also had some relatives outside his immediate family. When the storm of 1962 hit, the Gargans were forced to evacuate their beach-block premises.
“Yes, the water was right up against my house,” he says. “We lived right on the water and I could see the boardwalk floating, uprooted by the pillars. Fortunately, we had cousins who lived in Rio Grande and we went right there. We had to stay there about three days.
“The house was OK for the most part; you could see water marks on it, though. I went walking on the beach after the storm and all kinds of things [clothes, etc.] were scattered over the beach.”
Gargan comes from an athletic and innovative family.
His brother Chuck, now a pastor in Lakeland, Fla., was a kicker on the Middle Township High School football team. Chuck’s holder was none other than Dave Kerr, who eventually became a superior rower, won a South Jersey championship in 1980 and tragically died of cancer in 1981. The annual Kerr Memorials for the Avalon Patrol bear his name.
Another brother, Tommy, was an Ocean City High School quarterback. His sister Debbie lives in Florida and has become a good runner, he says. Gargan’s mother Betty is his next-door neighbor in Ocean City. Betty worked at the Harbor Theater as a ticket taker and that’s where he saw movies such as “Gorgo” and “13 Ghosts,” listing them among fond childhood memories.
Innovation was a Gargan family trademark. Guy said his father Ed was a sportswriter for the Press of Atlantic City in 1964-65 and one of the co-founders of the Avalon Herald (now the Cape May County Herald). Guy still has its first edition, Aug. 17, 1967. It was eight pages, he says. His mom was a typist for the publication. Ed also launched a scholastic sports publication that was ahead of its time during this era.
Gargan said his dad coached the Avalon Gems Midget football team. Stone Harbor had a team called the Fire Lions, he adds. His parents had a miniature golf course in Avalon in the 1960s on Dune Drive around 32nd Street.
Guy forged his own path between Middle Township and Ocean City High School, where he graduated. He boxed as a kid in the Avalon Community Hall, which is right where the races take place. U.S. Congressman Charlie Sandman officiated the fights, which were organized by Phil Matalucci (Phil’s Rock Room, Phil’s Bongo Room).
After his boxing career, Guy entered journalism through his father, in Ocean City.
“My dad asked me to write about Ocean City football in 1980 for his local paper, the Ocean City Record,” he remembers. “I really enjoyed it and it went from there.”
That eventually led to the Press of Atlantic City, where he still covers several sports. The lifeguard beat opened in 1992 and it has been Gargan’s baby ever since.
“I always thought ‘Baywatch,’ which was a superstar show, helped lifeguard-racing coverage explode in this area,” he says. “It let people know what lifeguarding is. Lifeguarding was a minor thing at the Press for many years and then it became splashed across the front page. To me, that wasn’t coincidence.”
Gargan was pragmatic about one coincidence that jolted his occupation this year. On his 66th birthday, March 12, the coronavirus began shutting down all major sports.
The development also threw lifeguard racing for 2020 into limbo.
“We are in the safety business and we’re not going to put anybody at risk,” he says. “I feel terrible that the spring season has been lost. A lot of kids were going to achieve things and they did not get a chance to, but that’s how it is with this virus.”
Gargan feels no particular irony about growing up a couple hundred yards from where Avalon races are held now. Or that his grandfather Edward Cole, whom he never met, was an Avalon Beach Patrol captain “about 100 years ago.”
Gargan is, in one respect, a relic. No one else will ever write lifeguard stories, in five decades, for a home-delivered newspaper.
That’s why every race he covers is an occasion. It’s another trip to the beach. Another deadline met. Another victory for The King.
WILL THERE BE RACES IN 2020?
As of mid-June, the 2020 South Jersey Lifeguard racing season remained a “week to week” proposition, according to Stone Harbor Beach Patrol captain Sandy Bosacco, the head of the South Jersey Chiefs Association.
Races that would have begun in late June or early July have not been scheduled.
New Jersey COVID-19 restrictions, which closed beaches until late May, have raised uncertainty about whether a racing season will be possible because of safety considerations. Bosacco said it would be best to have the blessing of leadership from individual towns before proceeding. And then it would be up to the chiefs to come up with a plan.
