My Rowing Partner

By Ingrid Loos Miller

Guarded 1976-1984

Bruce Baird was my boss from 1976-1984, but mostly he was one of my best friends. When he died, part of me went with him. He always kept me safe and it is hard to come to terms with the fact that in the end, I could not do the same for him. I have dreams about him occasionally, and wish he could have known my children. I never knew his very well. Bruce carried with him a deep sadness in his personal life. Perhaps that is why he so embraced his guards as family.

The rookies called him "Daddy Bruce", only partially in jest. Like any good parent, Bruce was able to see the potential in all of us and he challenged us to go beyond our self-imposed limits. We all learned to fear him during training. He came up with the most grueling and unpleasant tests. As physical as those tests appeared to be, they were all in reality, tests of will. Bruce had little patience for egotistical hot shots. He wanted guards he could count on to do the right thing. His lessons went beyond teaching us to be good lifeguards. He wanted us to be good people, too.  Bruce told the truth and sometimes it hurt, but it was not his nature to sugarcoat.

The only time he did not tell the truth was when he was in pain. I saw him break his toe on the lifeguard dory once. I saw him in agony with severe stomach cramps during a particularly difficult 6-hour race. I saw him lose one of his heroes, Dean Westgaard. I saw him grapple with professional betrayals among his peers.  In the end, I saw him facing cancer, and the pain was in his eyes but he did not want to talk about it.  

Bruce was "The Chief". He was our leader, but his focus was always on us, his guards. He kept us safe while encouraging us to grow. He never made decisions based upon gossip. He confronted guards that were having trouble and went to great lengths to help them.  His quiet charisma charmed us, and his grim determination intimidated us. He expected us to do our best. He was active in the local and national lifeguard associations, and made a point of improving our level of training and professionalism.

Bruce was also one of us. He joined in the tortilla throwing revelry of a certain "La Bamba" party one year, and he cooked scrumptious feasts for the annual luau.

He encouraged us to compete in lifeguard competitions up and down the coast, and he participated as well.

Soon after I became a guard, we started rowing the dory together in competition. Bruce and I both felt that we would be a hindrance to other guards. Bruce thought he was "too old" and I knew I was not as strong as the men, so we became rowing partners. Nonetheless, what we lacked in strength we made up for in finesse. Bruce had an uncanny ability to read the surf and we took pride in our ability to land the dory through the surf without capsizing. Bruce expertly steered from the stern while I worked the oars in the bow. We usually finished among the top three in the dory relays.

We decided it would be fun? Interesting? to participate in the annual race across the Catalina Channel.  We trained with workouts from Laguna, to Dana Point and Newport. We never went out in the dory without a couple of fishing poles, returning with a load of fish as well as sore muscles. Bruce was a Cordon Bleu chef and he showed me how to clean and prepare the fish. We shared our troubles and made each other laugh during those workouts. We left our cares on the beach and enjoyed the exertion of the workout in the serenity of the ocean. The hardest part of the workout was returning to shore, pushing the heavy wooden dory up the sand amid gawking beachgoers.

The first time we did the race we were prepared for the worst. We did not have a chase boat to carry our supplies. Since the race started early in the morning at Catalina, we camped on the beach the night before. We rowed back carrying our camping gear, enough food and water for several days (what if we got lost?) and rescue beacons.  It is a wonder we finished the race at all with so much cargo.  The finish line was in the Long Beach Harbor. As we approached the finish line, we fouled the line of a fisherman on the breakwater. We were too darn tired to row around his line. Our exhaustion threw us into hysterics and we finally crossed the finish line with tears streaming down our faces.

One year, there was another man-woman team that we tried hard to beat. Bruce felt as though he let me down when they pulled ahead of us after several hours. He suffered such a terrible bout of stomach cramps I was afraid we would not make it. But Bruce never gave up and we finished.  In the years that followed, we repeated the race several times, traveling lighter and faster each time.  .

Bruce could have traded me for a stronger rowing partner, but he never wanted to. He told me that to do such a race required a special level of trust. Indeed, we saw each other at our worst, for hours at a time, in the middle of the ocean. There was no escape if things turned sour between us. They never did.

When I stopped guarding and started law school, Bruce and I stayed I touch and went to lunch several times a year. I was through with rowing, but Bruce kept on racing across the Catalina Channel. Instead of finding another rowing partner, he rowed the

2-man dory alone.

In my dreams Bruce is always at the place he most cherished, on the ocean with his friends.