Retire at 55? Yeah, Right!
July 15, 2005 -- -- In the "By the Boardwalk" series, ABCNEWS.com goes down the Jersey Shore each week to bring you another slice of beach life. In this week's issue we try to figure out why some lifeguards come back to the beach summer after summer. One thing we know for sure -- it's not for the money.
The walls of Dave Kaplan's bedroom are decorated with pictures of Bradley Beach lifeguards through the years. There is Kaplan with an "afro" when he started in 1962, Kaplan back when only the men worked on the beach and women were relegated to the pool, Kaplan with guards a third of his age. Throughout the years, the only constant is Kaplan.
"All those guys in those old pictures, they all make all this money, and they all envy me," Dave said. "They're all highly successful guy -- doctors, lawyers, judges -- but whenever I see them, they all say, 'Dave' I wish I was still with you at the beach.' The beach is their youth, their childhood, and they've left it behind.
"I'm still in my childhood. I'm Peter Pan. I never want to grow up."
At 60, Dave is the oldest lifeguard at Bradley Beach, a small town on the Jersey Shore where the population swells from 5,000 in the winter to approximately 30,000 in the summer. Kaplan may even be the oldest lifeguard who sits in the stand on a daily basis in the state. But he is just one of many lifeguards who return to the beach year after year, drawn by the promise of a (nearly) endless summer and the camaraderie, adrenaline and youthful reveries the season entails on the Jersey Shore.
For many lifeguards, there is no better job.
"I can't imagine being anyplace else but here," said Bob Rosenberg, 53, the assistant supervisor at Bradley Beach. "When I first started, even on my days off I'd be down at the beach and at night I'd be at the boardwalk."
Rosenberg is a teacher during the winter months, which gives him time in the summer to lifeguard. But others go to extreme lengths to work at the beach.
Kaplan is a groundwater pollution geologist with the New Jersey Environmental Protection Agency, and saves up his vacation time so he can take every Thursday and Friday off in the summer to lifeguard. John McCahill, 54, runs his own internationally focused consulting group, but he makes time to lifeguard every Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
