Asbury Park lifeguard's been doing it more than half a century

When Joe Bongiovanni became a lifeguard, Lyndon Johnson was president, Gov. Phil Murphy was in 5th grade, and Bruce Springsteen was an unknown boardwalk musician.

That was 1968 and he had just graduated from Neptune High School with an eye toward college and was looking for some summer cash. Lifeguarding looked the most promising.

Fast forward 57 years and he’s is still at it, spending yet another summer guarding the Asbury beachfront, but this time as beach safety supervisor. That job puts him in charge of all the lifeguards but still requires some time on “the bench” as they call the guard chair towers.

“I still do it, someone will call up and say they can’t make it and I will sit in for them, sometimes for an afternoon or even a whole week,” Bongiovanni, 75, said. “I also ride around and pull up behind the lifeguards and make sure they are watching the water and not their phones.”

The senior lifesaver credits a strong workout regime that includes a daily hour of cardio and weightlifting three times a week with his ability to keep doing the rigorous job. "Then there is always work around the house to be done," he added. "Which my wife helps with."

With nearly six decades of lifeguarding under his belt, Bongiovanni - married with three kids and two grandkids - has seen the famed Asbury Park beach and boardwalk through its heydays of the late 60s, downturns of the 70s and 80s, and a rebirth that’s still occurring.

“Asbury was the place to be and I was very fortunate when I started here we had a lot of good lifeguards who taught me a lot,” Bongiovanni recalled about his early days. “They were old school, that is the way you learned, there was no official training program. You picked it up from them.”

Too many rescues to keep track

Unlike today’s guard recruits, who are required to be certified in first aid and CPR, as well as take part in an approved lifesaving program, Bongiovanni’s tryout consisted of one 500-meter simulated rescue with no training.

“We had a lifeguard belt and you clipped a line to that and swam out, got the victim and you raised your arm to pull them back in,” he said. “But my belt came off and I had to cross chest him and pull him in, that was the test. I thought I had failed but they told me that I did a terrific job handling the lost belt.”

No First-Aid certification was required, and CPR was still coming into its own as a widespread technique. “You learned a lot from the other lifeguards on the beach,” Bongiovanni said.

After that first summer, the rookie rescuer attended East Stroudsburg University and earned a degree in physical education. But each year he returned to the Asbury beaches and guard duty.

When he landed his first post-college job, a physical education spot at Neptune High School, the summer beach gigs continued. Bongiovanni spent 38 years at the high school, where he also coached, before retiring years ago.

But during that time he kept serving summers on the Asbury beach “bench” and experienced every aspect of lifeguarding, both good and bad.

“I don’t know how many rescues I’ve had. I used to keep track, it became kind of routine,” Bongiovanni said. “We didn’t have radios to communicate or paddle boards. We had to communicate by whistles, three or four lifeguards on a bench, you would give three blasts on a whistle to send help. Now you get on a radio and help is in two minutes. Most beaches have motorist ATVs to get around.”

He cited other small changes, such as the elimination of some stricter boardwalk rules: “There was a time when you couldn’t walk on the boardwalk barefoot. You would get splinters, so they stopped it. You also had to have a top on, not just a bathing suit, men and women.”

An ounce of prevention is worth a lot fewer rescues

Bongiovanni stressed that a lifeguard's biggest job relates to things most people never know about: prevention and seeing trouble before it hits.

“We may have 300 rescues each summer but we probably prevent 3,000 of them,” he said. “The hardest thing a lifeguard has to do is watch the water and be disciplined to watch the water. We like to be preventative and proactive. You see that rip starting to form you get on the whistle and move the people in.”

Although trained in CPR decades ago, Bongiovanni said he has never had to use it and never lost a swimmer who was bathing during regular hours.

Among the biggest rescues over the years were a few instances of so-called “washouts,” when a rip tide pulls bathers into an area where the underwater sand floor has dropped.

Bongiovanni recalled a 1971 event just after the July Fourth holiday when some two dozen people were suddenly pulled under and had to be fished out.

“One lifeguard had four or five people, another one had a couple of people, and I was cross-chesting people into the beach,” Bongiovanni recalls. “We must have pulled out more than 20 people between the four of us. We've had a few of those.”

In some cases, swimmers needed to be rescued after getting themselves into dangerous spots either through carelessness or being unaware of the dangers.

“One lady dove in the water off the jetty by the side of Convention Hall, ignoring a sign and a rip current pulled her out,” Bongiovanni recalled. “The waves are crashing into the jetty, a 10-foot surf, she was flailing around and I responded.

“There was no way to bring her straight in because waves were on the rocks,” he added. “I had to crawl on my hands and knees trying to figure out how to rescue her. The waves were reaching the jetty.”

He said one wave eventually came, picked her up and put her on the jetty “like a feather. She didn’t have a scratch on her.”

Other routine responses range from boats getting stranded on the jetty after running out of gas to a catamaran mast breaking and stranding a group of youngsters: “We managed to paddle it on to the beach.”

The veteran beach guard said while no one has ever died on his watch, or that of any of his lifeguards, he has been faced with swimmers who drowned after hours.

“I’ve had to pull two bodies out of the ocean,” Bongiovanni said. “They were after hours drowning, after we had left the beach, people who had gone in the water.”

He said they included a 21-year-old man and another in his 30s.

“One of them floated up two days later and the other one was found by the state police. They did it with sonar,” Bongiovanni said. “It is something that you never forget, it is a very morbid thing.”

Who's girlfriend did Springsteen steal away?

But he stresses the majority of Asbury Park beach memories are positive - and not always confined to the water.

“You had rock shows in convention hall and pretty much everyone played there except the Beatles,” Bongiovanni recalls about the first years of his lifeguard duties. “The Rolling Stones, Sonny and Cher. Everybody came there. The Four Seasons were there every year. And The Doors.”

He said lifeguards were given a deal if they served as ushers – a $10 entrance fee and free admission for a guest.

Bongiovanni remembered a concert by the Doors and controversial lead singer Jim Morrison, who had been arrested weeks earlier for obscenity when he used the F-word on stage in another location.

“When he came to Asbury Park the police chief said, ‘If he says that here, I’m going to arrest him.’” Bongiovanni recalled. “Sure enough, he came out and said ‘Shut up you little Motherf-----s.’ But he convinced them not to arrest him.”

Then there was a young Springsteen who was often playing on the boardwalk for donations, a move that did not sit well with local police, Bongiovanni recalls.

“He was just some longhaired musician. Later on we found out who he was,” he said. “He would always stop on the boardwalk, play for money, the police would come by and tell him he couldn’t play, couldn’t panhandle. He would close it up and move along, then they would leave and he would move a block down and do it again.”

Springsteen allegedly drew the ire of some of the beach crew when a guard’s girlfriend broke off with him to date the Boss. “He took one of the lifeguard’s girlfriends,” Bongiovanni. “So a lot of the lifeguards didn’t like him for that.” He didn't say if her name was Sandy.

The more things change, the less people follow rules

The biggest change over the years? Beachgoers who fail to follow rules and directions, sometimes with devastating consequences.

“People were a lot more respectful of rules than they are today, like everything,” Bongiovanni said during an interview in the Asbury beach office. “They would listen to instructions. When you blow the whistle and tell people to move in or move down, they would obey their instructions. You get a little more kick back now, more people think the rules are not for them.”

He said the need to follow the directions is not just out of respect, but safety and often life or death.

“These young men and woman are putting their lives on the line so that you can come to the beach and understand lifeguard directions,” he stressed. “A lot of people ignore lifeguard instructions. Most of them are young kids and they are putting their lives at risk to save people. It is important to respect and obey them.”