Lifeguard honored with swim race

Newport Beach Lifeguard Buddy Belshe thought he wanted to be a schoolteacher once he graduated college back in the 1950s. But those plans changed when then Newport Beach Fire Chief Jan Brisco asked him to come aboard as a full-time lifeguard.

Over the next 47 years, Belshe, 73, found his own classroom among the lifeguards he crossed paths with in a number of posts along the shores of Newport Beach. He decided this year it was time to turn in his rescue buoy and retire from his seasonal work guarding Corona del Mar State Beach, a task he has enjoyed over the past two decades.

So the department created an annual race — the Buddy Belshe Buoy Swim — in honor of Belshe, who has reached legendary status among his peers.

Just before 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, 17 seasonal and full-time lifeguards, including Fire Chief Steve Lewis, crowded together on the south side of Newport Pier clad in Speedos and swim caps for the inaugural swim, which went 200 yards into the surf and rounded the very buoy Belshe used for practice decades earlier during his time as a full-time captain of the guards.

Everyone completed the race in fewer than 10 minutes amid chilly waters and the overpowering chop of a news helicopter’s propeller and a cadre of photographers waiting on the beach.

“I didn’t really know they were going to do this,” Belshe said, but he was thrilled with the event — as he is with any activity involving two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen.

“I’ve been in the water since I was about 3 years old,” Belshe said. Protecting swimmers seemed to come naturally; his father was the first paid guard for the city of Huntington Beach, where Belshe spent his first 17 years as a lifeguard.

A father figure, Belshe has tried to pass on small nuggets of helpful information to his fellow guards.

Seasonal lifeguard Jenna Murphy remembers meeting Belshe more than seven years ago on her first day on the job at Corona del Mar State Beach. Murphy crossed the finish line second in Wednesday’s swim.

“He came and gave me the break down, and showed me the way around the beach,” said Murphy, 22, a UCLA graduate. “He’s always energetic and running up and down the beach.”

Lewis, who came in first in the fire division in the swim, said Belshe showed him “you’re only as old as you are in your head.”

“Most people in their 70s sit in a chair all day long just doing nothing,” Lewis said. “He was out there saving lives.”

After the swimmers came in, Belshe donated his oldest rescue buoy, a yellow metal capsule he used in the 1950s for all sorts of saves and “a few riots,” he said.

“I think I made the right decision,” Belshe said. “What more do you ask for, not everybody enjoys there jobs.”

Next year’s race is scheduled for Aug. 20.