The White Hat
By Dale Ghere
2004
When I first came to Laguna Beach to guard in 1960 there were a variety of hats worn by the guards. Some were straw hats from Tahiti or some other South Pacific island. Some were from Mexico. Some guards just wore visors. Some didn’t ever want to wear a hat. The hat that was offered by the department was a white cardboard pith helmet. No one seemed to mind what hat was used, so I tried a wide variety of shapes and styles through those first few years. Some hats were to hot, or they wouldn’t stay on when there was a wind. Some turned out to be too heavy when worn all day. Cloth hats got too dirty. It didn’t take too long to figure out that I was looking for some type straw-like hat. Finding the right combination of crown shape and brim design seemed to be puzzling for me. There were many shapes available from Carpenter’s and the Toy Store on Main Beach. Some hats lasted most of the season while others fell apart in a couple of weeks. Through a process of trial and error I finally settled on a cowboy hat that was made for children. The first thing I did to the hat was to soak it in the ocean long enough to reform the brim. I wanted the brim to curve down in the front and back instead of curving up on the sides like a cowboy’s hat. Once the hat was wet and reshaped it took only a few minutes for the sun to make the new shape permanent. It worked fine. It kept both my face and the back of my neck shaded. With a little care and no accidents I could make it through the summer with two hats. Each hat cost me sixty-nine cents. That might not sound like much by toady’s standards, but we were only making a $1.60 an hour when I started. To some degree that hat became my trademark on the beach. People got use to looking for the hat when they wanted to find me. Although the pith helmets were always available few people used them, I hated them. Forty-four years later I still use the same style hat when I am on the beach.
Around 1970 Skip was on one of his tirades to get rid of the older guards. One morning I was the one he thought that he would try to intimidate. As I was preparing to leave the headquarters (the old Boy’s Club at the north end of Main Beach) he said, “Ghere I don’t want you to wear that straw hat anymore. Get rid of it!” He went on to say that it was not professional looking and I should wear a pith helmet so the other guards would also. I explained that I wasn’t about to go to his choice of a hat. He got very mad and said a lot of things about how I was holding the lifeguard department back from being as professional as the police and fire departments. He finished with the threatening statement, “I am going to a meeting at city hall and when I get back if you are not wearing a white hat you’re fired.” After he left everyone asked me what I was going to do. Without much thought I simply walked into the back room, got a can of white spay paint, put my hat on my index finger and gave the hat a spin. As the hat went around I sprayed the crown and brim white. In a short time the paint was dry. I put the hat on and went to work at the Main Beach Tower. Skip never said anything about the hat again.
A few years after I stopped guarding Jim Stauffer and Bruce Baird were trying to decide on a type of hat that would provide good sun protection for the guards and something that everyone would be willing to wear. By the mid-70’s people were beginning to get serious about reducing the possibility skin cancer. Jim and Bruce finally decided on a straw hat that had a brim that was larger than my hat, is heavier and more durable than the one I use. Bruce thought that the straw was a good material, but he thought that it might not be visible enough for people to quickly identify a guard among all the other people on the beach. He wanted a hat that was recognizable by everyone on the beach. Jim then suggested that they spray the crown and brim white like Ghere did. Thus was born the “Lifeguard White Straw Hat.”
Bruce eventually gave some hats to the staffs at Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. Jim took the hat idea with him when he started Lifeguards International and started guarding the county beaches. In quick succession the white hat moved along the coast to other departments.
It is always interesting to me to see how an event unfolds like a flower until it is fully developed. There was no single event or situation that generated the “White Hat”, it was a series of things that occurred over a period of several years, which brought about the final product. Because the outcome was good the White Hat has endured.
Today as I travel along the coast and see guards walking to work or sitting in their towers with their straw hats I am reminded of friends that I admire like Bruce and Jim. I think about the young people wearing the hats and I admire them for their dedication, talent and preparation. I know that each of them has been willing to pay a high price for the right to wear the hat. I was given many gifts as I learned to be a guard. There were men willing to take the time and make the effort to prepare me to be capable of accepting the baton that I would be handed. That hat is no longer just a hat. It is part of the mantle that is offered to those who have qualified to become part of the brotherhood of beach lifeguards. I am pleased that for so many years I had a roll in the process of training capable, talented and determined young men who wanted to become lifeguards (sorry girls, we were not enlightened in those days).
Dale Ghere
Guarded 1960-1974
I guarded at St. Ann’s Beach for several years and eventually moved to Main Beach where I took on the Junior Lifeguard Program. Eventually, with LaVern Dugger’s blessing, I started the Rookie Training Program in 1968 The Rookie program is still used today,
No comments:
Post a Comment