Dean Westgaard

Dean Westgaard

By Dale Ghere

2005

The day I was hired to be a lifeguard for Laguna was the first step into a lifestyle that I had never imagined. In the beginning I thought that I would go to work on the beach somewhere, get off work at six and do a little surfing in the evening. Beyond that I really didn’t have any other plans. I only knew one other person in the whole city and he planned to do the same thing I was going to do. As far I was concerned life was looking pretty good.

First year guards made about $12.00 a day in the summer of 1960. I thought I was about to become wealthy. Before the first day of work Kiwi and I found housing in an old restaurant that was located at the entrance to Three Arch Bay. Today the north half of the building is a dental office. The other half became a parking lot. Four of us went together to rent the restaurant. We each paid $30.00 a month. How much better could life get than to live on the beach with three other guards, get paid for going to the beach all day and surfing as much as I wanted?

On the first day of work I was assigned Woods Cove, but when I told them that I didn’t know where it was they decided to place me at a beach that they could just point to. So off I went to St. Ann’s. I didn’t know it, but my life was about to take a whole knew direction. I would meet people over the next few months and years that would help me to mature, to gain confidence, to set life long goals and develop a career. Dean Westgaard would become the catalyst for many of the changes that finally stuck. When I became a guard I thought of the beach as a place to work. Dean taught me that it was a place to develop a life style. There was never a doubt in my mind that he took lifeguarding seriously. He was the one that taught everyone how to improve their guarding skills. Everyday started with him telling stories or getting someone else to tell a story about how a rescue or first aid was handled the day before. He would walk us through every event and reinforce what had been done right and what might have been done to improve the situation. Dean’s primary objective during the day was guarding lives, everything else was secondary.

What began to excite me most about guarding was what people did before and after guarding all day. As days turned into weeks and weeks into months my life ambitions were taking some dramatic alterations. I had come to Laguna for summer employment. At the end of summer I would then return to college. As the summer progressed my goals started to change. All of the other guys were doing such exciting things. I was ready to make some changes.

The door to diving was opened for me. I could not believe what could be acquired with just a short dive. At St. Ann’s beach abs, lobsters, and halibut were abundant. Dean and his family lived just above my beach. He would come down almost nightly and go for a short dive if there were calm surf conditions. I couldn’t believe what he was taking home for dinner. I started diving right away. I found that he made it look a lot easier than it really was. When he watched me collect my first ab he knew that I didn’t know what I was doing because it was a black. He patiently explained the difference between good and bad abalone. I next learned to dive for halibut and then I moved to lobsters. After a while I even found a few scallops.

Dean saw that I wanted to learn all of the beach skills. He next moved me into the old dory that was left near the Main Beach tower. I couldn’t believe the bounty that could be produced with a short row down the coast. This beach life just kept getting better. I got paid for going to the beach; I could surf before and after work and I could collect a free dinner on the way home--lovely.

Before the end of summer I had my new life mapped out. I would guard until October. Then with my pockets full of money I would buy a new rhino surfboard and go to the north shore and ride big surf until January. I would then go to the mountains and learn to ski well enough to get on the ski patrol. I planned to work in the mountains until the snow went away and then I would buy a woody and surf up and down the coast until summer returned. I was on a roll.

When I shared this dream with Dean he started spending more time on my beach. He also invited me home for dinner a few times. Each time we would wind up talking about where I was headed. He asked if I liked what I was doing. I said that this was the perfect life. He then said that I needed to go back to college and get a teaching degree so I could guard during the summers. We had a lot of very long discussions about my goals.

Dean lost the first round of discussions. I didn’t go back to school and I did go to the islands with some other guards. It was an incredible winter. It was my first experience with waves well over twenty feet. I did come home and buy a 1948 woody for $200. I did take off and surf from Rincon south to Mexico, but in the end Dean’s influence was just too great. I went back to school and got a teaching credential. I guarded summers until 1974 and after 34 years of teaching I retired in 2000.

During the first few years in Laguna I thought that I was the ‘chosen one’ that Dean had selected to mentor, but as the years passed by I realized that I was really just one of many that was given that privilege. We all gained from his influence. Each one of us that guarded with Dean felt fortunate to have known a man of his character. That is why the Laguna Beach Lifeguard Headquarters carries his name.

Hopefully every young person has a hero, someone to emulate and follow. The night I discovered that he had died I went to the beach and cried uncontrollably. A friend and a mentor had been lost. I have been comforted to know that his influence on my life would touch both my children and grand children. I miss him a lot.

Over Here Ghere

Over Here Ghere

By Dale Ghere

2005

It was about 10:30 in the evening, towards the end of October, probably about 1970 or 71, when I got a call from the police department dispatcher. Apparently there was a report that someone was in the water off of Oak Street yelling for help and since I was on call I would need to respond.

I put on my Speedos, grabbed my fins and tube, and jumped in the car and head down the hill to Oak St. I figured that I could run all of the stop signs because any policeman on duty would be headed there also. It didn’t take long to travel the three quarters of a mile. By the time I got there several people had already informed the police officer that they had heard someone yelling for help well beyond the surf line. They said the voice had become rather faint because he seemed to be out so far.

None of their stories made much sense to me. It was pitch dark, there was not any surf to speak of and therefore there was no rip. Who besides a diver would be out in the water at that time of night? And if there was someone out there how was I suppose to find him in the dark? There was certainly no indication to either the officer or myself that anyone was still in the water. There had not been another yell for help since either one of us had arrived. The only troubling part was that everyone agreed that they had clearly heard someone yell for help, not once, but several times. I hadn’t taken a board or a light. I had not even taken time to get a wetsuit. It didn’t look like I had very many options open to make people think that I knew what I was doing. I was going to have to get in the water and make it look like I was there to find and save the yelling victim. My heart wasn’t really into getting in the water. I didn’t expect to be able to swim out in the dark, find the victim and return to the beach with the admiration of all who were there. As I slipped off my pants and shirt I asked everyone to shout to the person to see if they could get a response. They did as I requested, but no sounds returned except those of the breaking waves.

I asked a guy to point in the direction that he thought the last sound came from. As he pointed I entered the water and dove under the first wave. I didn’t figure this would take too long. I would just swim out past the surf line, yell a few times and then return to beach. I figured that I would probably have more luck finding a diver who had gotten scared and started yelling in the dark for his buddy. I wouldn’t expect to find them still in the water, but back on the beach, probably at Mountain Rd. or perhaps Thalia St. But for now I needed to do something and this was the best thing I could think of. So out I went. I yelled loud enough for the people on the beach to hear “Is there anyone out here?” Then I swam another 25 or 30 yards and repeated the yell. Each time, as expected, there was no returning voice seeking help. It was chilly, but not so cold that I was in any great hurry to get out of the water. I don’t remember how many times I called out, but I will never forget what happened after my last call.

I had finally swum about as far as I wanted to go when I made the last call. This time I yelled towards the beach. I wanted to make sure that everyone was well aware that I was trying to find the person and that I was not going to give up easily. I yelled, “If there is anyone out here you had better yell now or I am going to leave you here. I am swimming back to the beach.” That is when I heard a quiet voice come across the water from the dark abyss of the ocean, “Over here Ghere.” The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, every nerve in my body was prepared to send a message somewhere and I was about ready to dance on the water all the way back to the beach. What was happening? Who was in the water? And most importantly how did they know it was Ghere.

It didn’t take too long to get all of the answers and for my heart rate and blood pressure to return to normal. I swam in the direction of the voice and found one of my old beach gremlins from Saint Ann’s having a good time swimming around. He was high on something. We talked for a while and then I asked him to swim to the beach with me so that everyone could go home and know that all was well for the evening. When we started out of the surf I realized that he was naked so I asked the officer to get my towel and give it to him. He couldn’t remember where he had left his cloths so I walked down the beach searching for the missing cloths. I found nothing. Sadly, by the time I got back to where everyone was the police officer had decided that he was going to take him to the police station for being on drugs.

Ten years earlier Laguna was the center of the drug culture for southern California, to some degree it was probably the Mecca for all druggies of that era. The preaching of Timothy O’Leary and the drugs took a heavy toll on the youth of Laguna during those years.

It was several years later before the next time I saw the errant gremlin. Once again our encounter was on the beach, he was visiting Laguna from a halfway house in Costa Mesa. He said that life had been difficult the past few years. Most of the kids made it through those turbulent years and developed good lives, some didn’t.