Intro
This excerpt is based on my biography of George Freeth which came out with the University of Illinois Press in 2022: Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture. After I finished the biography, I still had questions about Freeth. I wanted to know why he chose to live in California and to dedicate himself to saving lives. I decided to imagine answers by writing a novel about his life and dramatizing his motivations based on the facts that I knew about him. See The Hawai`i Review of Books for another excerpt from the novel.
Except from Eulogy for a Waterman
Saturday, April 12, 1919
Johnson-Saum Funeral Home
San Diego, California
Two o’clock
Sherwood Kinney
“On behalf of the Kinney family,” Sherwood said to the roomful of mourners in the chapel, “I offer our deep regrets at George’s passing, and our sincere condolences to his friends, and to his family in Hawaii. My father, Abbot Kinney, gave George his start in Southern California. He hired him for surfriding exhibitions at our resort in Venice. This was a dozen years ago now, in July of 1907. We knew Lloyd Childs, agent for the Hawaii Promotion Committee—he presented lectures every day at the chamber of commerce building in downtown Los Angeles to promote the islands—and Lloyd had met George on a recent trip to Honolulu. George showed a keen interest in coming to Southern California, and with Lloyd’s help we arranged a contract for him and Ken Winter that summer to work for the Kinney Company.
“I was on the pier with the rest of our lifesaving corps during George’s famous rescue of seven Japanese fishermen in December of 1908, and I can confirm that he was a true hero that day and deserved his gold medal from the United States Lifesaving Service. I was sixteen when I first met George.” Sherwood paused and crooked a smile. “I was a cocky little chap, as you might imagine: the second oldest son of Abbot Kinney, owner of the resort. I accompanied my father regularly on his morning swims in the ocean, and I had already sailed my own skiff to Catalina Island with a friend—about eighty miles round-trip—so when I was elected third lieutenant of the lifesaving corps, I felt I deserved it. George had been elected captain, of course. Lou Hammel served as first lieutenant, Thomas Wild second lieutenant, and Dr. Sheffield our surgeon. With those men around me, I was confident that I could handle whatever rescue came our way.
“This despite a heart condition caused by rheumatic fever the year of my birth. I’m fortunate to have survived these twenty-eight years and another epidemic, knock on wood. My father is a great believer in the self-made man. One sets goals and accomplishes them no matter the obstacles. Everything is possible in the land of sunshine and opportunity, so we are told. One need only have the right vision and determination. An overly slender youth with a strong will—despite his damaged heart—could become whatever he wanted to become, even a great lifeguard. I was raised to believe this was possible and wanted to believe it, with all the heart I had.
“My father talked to me about joining the lifesaving corps when he and Captain Grant first struck upon the idea of its formation. This was in May of 1907, two months before George arrived. We had recently lost two local fisherman, John Cochran and his mate Frank. They had taken out the gasoline launch Boston and ran into trouble motoring back from Ocean Park, just to the north of Venice. They overturned in heavy surf about a mile offshore. This was around three o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, so you can imagine the crowds gathered along the beach and pier.
“The two men clung to the bottom of the launch for nearly two hours. Captain W. C. Sharp and Andy Anderson were sailing back from Ocean Park on the Challenger and tried to rescue the men. The surf being too big and unruly, they were forced to heave to, or risk capsizing themselves. Andy jumped off the Challenger and swam to the Boston but failed to locate either man. Around seven o’clock that evening, the Boston finally washed up against the Venice pier, and we found John Cochran’s body. He didn’t know how to swim so he had lashed himself to the side of the launch with fishing line, desperate to stay afloat. At some point he could no longer hold his breath as the Boston rolled upside down in the surf. My father saw the opportunity to create a lifesaving corps to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future, and he encouraged me to join that outfit, which I did.
“After George’s rescue of the Japanese fishermen the following year, my father advised me to seek him out for more training. He pointed to the many newspapers stacked on our dining room table carrying pictures of George and long descriptions of his heroics. Didn’t I want to make my mark in the world? he asked me. A man needed to push himself—to brave the elements like George and swim out in the storms that life sends our way. Each one of us had not only a responsibility to perform to the best of our abilities, but a humanitarian duty. Besides, no man—and certainly no Kinney—ever rose above the crowd, let alone made second lieutenant, by sitting safely in the back of a dory.
“I flinched at his words. I felt that he had ferreted out my secret fears. I’d wanted to make him proud and do my duty, of course, so I had joined the lifesaving corps. But I hadn’t been able to forget Frank Cochran’s body hanging off the side of the Boston—the haggard look on his wrinkled face, his empty eyes trapped open.
“I found George in the lifesaving station several days after he’d rescued the fishermen. I was determined to thrust aside my fears and prove to my father once and for all—and perhaps to myself—that I could make my mark like the next man. I hoped a few pointers from George would do the trick.
“George nodded at me when I explained to him what I wanted. ‘Come around beside the pier,’ he told me. The ocean was quite calm and clear, but still very cold—the sky gray, with rain in the forecast. I wasn’t in my bathing costume. I thought we might wait until a warmer day, perhaps when the sun came out. ‘Right now?’
“He had already started walking out the door. I changed quickly in the quarters and ran along the south side of the pier toward shore, looking for George, who was nowhere to be found. Until I peered over the edge, and there he sat on the bottom in about twelve feet of water. I didn’t know how long he’d been down there. I waited, thinking maybe he would surface. After thirty seconds or so, I realized that he wasn’t coming up. He was waiting for me. So I counted three deep breaths, jumped in, and swam toward the bottom.”
Sherwood looked at George’s casket. “I’ve never told anyone this story because I was too humiliated about what happened. These dozen years later, I’ve done my bit in the Army, clerking at Vancouver Barracks.” He tapped his chest by way of explanation for the stateside duty. “I’m married with a young boy—little Abbot—and another child on the way. Foolish as it seems now, I still cringe at the hubris of my younger self. George kept the matter in confidence—I doubt he ever thought twice about it. But since he’s gone now, it seems a fitting time to send the story with him in tribute to his character. When everyone around me, including my father, was telling me all of the things that were possible for me to do because of who I was, George showed me what I couldn’t do, and it broke my heart. He exposed the real Sherwood Kinney: a timid boy pretending to be a man.
“I was having trouble staying on the bottom, sitting like George with his legs crossed on the sand. He reached out, grabbed my shoulder, and held me so that I could sit across from him. He stared at me as if we were playing the game of Who Can Stay Underwater The Longest, which he did with us on occasion in the plunge. He liked to test us with all manner of exercises. I understood that George had offered me a handicap by jumping into the water before me. I wanted to prove to him that I could do whatever he did, that I was ready to swim out in ocean storms and save people from drowning. I had never beaten him at this game, but this time felt different. I intended to show him that I would do whatever I had to do. So I stared back at him, insisting with my eyes: I will outlast you this time or drown trying.
“The problem with beating George was that you could never tell when he was running out of air. His expression didn’t change. He simply watched you with those curious brown eyes. Of course, after a minute, my lungs were hurting, and I struggled to stay down, even with George gripping my shoulder. I grabbed hold of a large rock behind me and dug my fingers into the crags, willing myself to swallow the pain in my chest. I wasn’t afraid of my heart exploding—it had never been so robust as that. Rather, I thought it might simply stop ticking like some defective timepiece.
“I let out half my air, unable to take the burning. It rushed out of my lungs like something alive bolting for the surface, showing me the way to safety. I thought George would let me go. I thought he would let me win this time. I had tried to impress upon him, just minutes earlier in the lifesaving station, how much my father desired this training for me, and how pleased he’d be with George for taking me under his wing. I’d assumed that he would cut me a break in his own self-interest. That’s what any other employee would have done.” Sherwood shook his head. “He never moved. I could tell he was waiting to see what I was going to do. He forced me to shove his hand away and push off the bottom. I was so angry. Right before I touched the surface, I actually screamed underwater, which cleared my lungs of oxygen. It didn’t matter: I saw a thin layer of foam on top of the water, some wood pylons rising in the air above me, even a small patch of pale sky. I opened my mouth to inhale—I can still taste the salt on my tongue, feel it stinging my eyes— and that’s when George grabbed me.”
Sherwood paused. He removed the handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his eyes. “There’s a workshop at Venice-of-America,” he continued, replacing his handkerchief, “where our mechanics work on the miniature steam engines that circle the resort every day of the year. These are actual steam engines imported from Europe, just as most of our gondoliers are young Italians singing their love songs to visitors as they ply the canals. Inside that shop, amid all of the engineering tools, there’s a large vice mounted to a bench. On that vice is a locking mechanism so that steel rails remain absolutely still when workers pound and bend them with sledge hammers. Sometimes my oldest brother Thornton and I would go down there to watch the men work. One night, when the shop was empty, Thornton pressed my arm in that vice as a joke. He wanted to see how much pressure I could take. When George grabbed my ankle, I felt like I was back in that vice, that’s how strong he was.
“I didn’t know what panic felt like until that day. I had no air, my mouth was filled with salt water, and I believed I was going to die. I kicked George as hard as I could, I clawed the surface, I thrashed like a fish on the gaff. It must have been mere seconds that he held me—just long enough to catch my attention—but time disappeared for me altogether. In its place was the raw fear that I would drown inches from the surface. The last thing I would see in this life was a wood pylon covered in black barnacles. I swear that Frank Cochran’s battered face emerged from the crusty foulers, staring me down.
“And then George let me go.
“I found myself being hauled up a ladder and set down on the edge of the pier. George sat next to me as I hacked and spit and bawled. I probably would have tipped off the pier back into the water had he not steadied me. I couldn’t talk, and I couldn’t see straight. We sat there for some time, until I had calmed down. I hated that he saw me like that, shaking and afraid like a small child. I wanted to run away but I didn’t trust my legs to hold me up, let alone carry me off. My chest ached to no end.
“‘You tried to drown me,’ I accused him when I could finally speak. ‘I almost died.’
“George nodded at me. ‘When you swim out for someone, that’s the first thing they do. They grab you with holds like steel’—he formed a fist and leaned in close—‘and they don’t let go, no matter whose son you are. If you don’t know how to break ‘em, you get two bodies on the beach instead of one.’
“I didn’t answer him. I was still furious, mostly at myself, though I didn’t realize it at the time.
“‘You know what’s worse than drowning?’ George said after a minute. I refused to look at him. I set my jaw and stared down at the water. Try as I might, I could not stop my body from shaking. ‘Knowing you could have saved someone but didn’t, because you didn’t know how to. That stays with you your whole life, brother.’ He clapped me on the shoulder and stood up. ‘Tell me when you want another lesson.’
“What I appreciated most about George, in the end, and what has stayed with me all these years, was his patience and understanding. He taught me skills that gave me confidence in myself and allowed me to overcome my fears. I was never going to be the lifeguard that George was, but he knew that he could teach me enough so that I could actually save a life if I needed to. I can’t tell you how much that knowledge has meant to me. It allowed me to find my place among the lifesavers and to truly feel that I was one of them. It has given me the strength to swim through the ocean’s waves and currents, enjoying the many pleasures it has to offer. I have broken holds of all kinds, thanks to George, not the least of which was learning to accept my limitations, weak heart and all. Everything may not be possible for me in the land of sunshine and opportunity, but some things are, and they are precious.”
Bio
Patrick Moser has an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona and teaches writing and French at Drury University (Springfield, Missouri). He is the editor of Pacific Passages: An Anthology of Surf Writing and has collaborated on two books with world surfing champion Shaun Tomson: Surfer’s Code, and The Code. His latest book will come out in June 2024: Waikīkī Dreams: How California Appropriated Hawaiian Beach Culture (University of Illinois Press). He is a recipient of the Carol Houck Smith Scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and was recently appointed as a Mayers fellow at the Huntington Museum for summer 2024.
Comments