Comments For A LIFEGUARD, TO BE OR NOT TO BE

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cal porter - July 06 , 2012

Hi Tom, thanks for your nice comments. I knew Johnny Weismuller but didn't really know Buster Crabbe, the other Tarzan. I did see him a few times at the beach because he at times hung out with the Santa Monica Lifeguards and worked out with them in the Venice Plunge where I was a lifeguard. cal

Tom Meade - July 05 , 2012

Dear Cal - enjoying these histories immensely and hope to meet you (again) one of these days. Glad to see you're still pumping goodies out. Interesting to see your writing of W. O'Connor, water polo - I was working out a Pep earlier tonite - Terry Schroeder was scrimmaging his US Olympic Water Polo Team. I wondered - at first thinking it was a water polo camp but the athletes were an order of magnitude bigger, fitter and actually sensational. When I got out I asked the staff and was pleased to hear I'd actually shared water with them. I'd wondered why Buster Crabbe wasn't covered but realized that he wasn't a beach person as far as I know. I sat next to him at the bar at Ted's Grille on Entrada one night in the 50's soon after his daughter Sande, whom I knew somewhat at SC, not long after anorexia took her. He poured his heart out but I never let on I knew who he was. My contact with real watermen has been quite tangential but having spent my early years at the corner of Centinela & Culver (now LAPD), Playa del Rey and the Westport before Malibu I've known or seen some of the characters from the later years. Your work, based as it is on peer contact is irreplaceable and will stand the test of time. Thank you for your fine efforts to memorialize the history of the So. Calif. coast and those who helped and inspired us to enter and play in its water. Tom Meade Pacific Palisades