Ordinary courage: a lifeguard’s story

By Tod Lundy

In this dramatic recollection from his student days, Tod offers a small, human-scale example of how responsibility, cooperation, and moral action can emerge without doctrine, ideology, or recognition – simply through people stepping in when it matters.

This is the second in a series of personal reflections from Tod, using stories from his own life to uncover ideas with universal relevance. Tod is a retired architect living in Astoria, Oregon, and is the facilitator of Humanist Discussions of Astoria which is held on-line every Monday.

As a student at the University of Oregon in 1959, I was required to take a PE class. Water Safety was offered: I thought that it would be an easy and potentially useful class, so I enrolled. It taught emergency management skills required to get a job as a lifeguard. During the Spring Term, I was thinking about a summer job. I contacted the Eugene Parks and Recreation Department to see if they had an opening for a lifeguard over the coming summer. They did: I was interviewed and got the job.

When my school year ended, I started work at Amazon Park. It had three pools: a wading pool, the main swimming pool, and a diving pool. We lifeguards would take turns walking around the wading pool or sitting in the elevated lifeguard stands at one of the other two pools. The summer proceeded with one uneventful day after another until one afternoon. I was in the lifeguard stand watching the diving pool when a girl ran up shouting, ‘Lifeguard, lifeguard, a boy has drowned. He’s on the bottom of the swimming pool.’ I glanced over and saw several kids looking down at the deep end of the swimming pool. The lifeguard assigned to watch that pool was unaware of what was happening – the glare of the sun off the water made it difficult for her to see into it from her stand. My location was the closest to the corner of the swimming pool the girl was pointing to.

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I shouted at the divers, ‘CLEAR THE POOL’, and jumped down from the stand. As I ran to the swimming pool, I saw the head of a teenage boy emerging from the water. He grasped the edge of the pool with one hand – with his other hand, he lifted a blue arm above the water. The rest of the small boy was still underwater. I grabbed his blue arm and pulled his limp body up out of the pool and over my knee. He was not breathing. I held his slimy mouth open and pressed my lips against his. I gave him a puff of air and he twitched. I gave him another and his chest convulsed as if to cough. I had been trained to put a victim on deck and apply chest compression, but that would not help in expelling water from his lungs. Intuitively, thinking that gravity could help to clear his lungs, I draped him over my knee at his waist so that his head and chest were hanging down. His chest heaved again: water came out of his mouth; he inhaled shallowly and coughed up more water. Soon, he was breathing and coughing. I picked up the still unconscious boy and, followed by a line of curious children, carried him to the pool office.

The pool manager was there. We wrapped the boy in a blanket, and the manager called for an ambulance. He also phoned the boy’s parents, who went directly to the hospital. I returned to my lifeguard stand, feeling greatly relieved that the boy was alive.

Later that afternoon, the Director of Parks and Recreation came to the pool. He first asked Rob, the pool manager, what had happened. Rob apparently had taken a class in med school about legal liability. He responded with a confounding answer to his boss’s question. He said, ‘No comment.’ Perturbed at his pool manager’s reply, the director came to me. I told him the story you have just read. That explanation of the event, and my part in it, resulted in my being given the job of pool manager the following summer.

The Register-Guard had a brief article stating that ‘A lifeguard, Tod Lundy, had resuscitated a boy at Amazon Pool. The boy was taken to St. Vincent Hospital, where he recovered and was released to his parents.’ I was awarded with an advancement and mention in the paper. But what about the teenage boy who pulled the kid off the bottom, or the girl who quickly summoned the nearest lifeguard? It does not seem right that neither received recognition. At the very least, they should each have been given a free pass to the pool for the rest of the summer.