Long Beach Lifeguard Patrol<\/a> in 1966, and said his seven years of lifeguarding were like a \u201csummer fraternity\u201d of watching the beach and having fun. During that time, he said, guards frequently saved swimmers who were pulled out past the jetties by rip currents, but no one ever drowned while they were on duty.\u00a0<\/p>\nAfter hours, Carey and his friends Jack Murphy and Randy Dodd hung out at Leone\u2019s, on Park Avenue, property now occupied by Starbucks. They also frequented the original Beachhouse, on Virginia Avenue.<\/p>\n
In Carey\u2019s rookie year, a cabin cruiser capsized near the rocks off the Maryland Avenue Beach. A half-dozen people were thrown into the water, he recounted, and one was trapped inside on the boat\u2019s lower level.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got down there and I saw that all the lifeguards left Georgia Beach,\u201d Carey said. \u201cI wanted to make sure that all the people stayed out of the water and no other tragedy was going to happen. I think there was a child or two on the boat, so it was a real life-threatening situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
For seven years, Carey worked up and down the beach. In the East End, near Pacific Boulevard, he said, he pulled an unconscious man who had epilepsy from the water, and revived him with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Mike DeLury, who is now the president of the Long Beach Lifeguard Alumni Association, worked with Tom Carey on the lifeguard patrol.<\/p>\n
\u201cDennis\u2019s wealth of Long Beach knowledge and the Long Beach patrol is vast,\u201d DeLury said. \u201cLong Beach was a different place back in the 1960s.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1976, after Dennis completed a pediatric residency at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, in Queens, he applied for fellowships in pediatric endocrinology in California.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was willing to go anywhere,\u201d he said. \u201cSan Francisco, L.A. I fell in love with San Diego. I just kept waiting until they were willing to pay me $10,000, and I was willing to take it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In July 1977, Carey began a fellowship at UC San Diego, after traveling across the country with his wife, Barbara. A year earlier, they had been in New York Harbor for Operation Sail, which celebrated the United States\u2019 Bicentennial. They had attended the Montreal Olympics, visited national parks in the Pacific Northwest and Canada, and spent time in Hawaii. Encouraged by family members and friends, Carey ultimately turned the five-month-long, 20,000-mile journey into a book called \u201cThe Creamsicle Express: Off to See America,\u201d which was published earlier this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kept a journal, and I always thought maybe I would write it up,\u201d Carey said. \u201cI have almost 1,000 photographs from that time. They brought back the memories and the beauty of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Carey worked as a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Connecticut from 1980 to 1992 before spending almost three decades at Cohen Children\u2019s Medical Center in Queens. He retired in 2021.<\/p>\n
Recently, he rekindled his love of surfing. He had bought his first surfboard in 1964, when he was 17, for $80.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish I started surfing when I was 10,\u201d he said. \u201cI could never imagine that I would have been surfing as an adult. My father used to always say to me, \u2018When are you going to grow up?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Carey has also continued writing. He authored a historical novel, \u201cThe Silver Strand: The Long Beach Saga,\u201d<\/a> which depicts life in Long Beach from as far back as 1837, and was published by Yerac Press. It includes an account from resident Randy Dodd, who was one of many Long Beach surfers who learned from Hawaiians who were staying at what was then the Colonial Apartments, on Shore Road.<\/p>\n\u201cThey were performing at Jones Beach theater in 1961,\u201d Dodd recounted. \u201cThey would come out and show us how to surf. We used to just take the board and ride in the whitewater. And they were the ones who showed us how to angle in the waves.\u201d<\/p>\n
These days, Carey, who has three adult children and also has a house in Huntington, enjoys spending time with his twin grandchildren, 2-year-olds Phoebe and Owen Carey. He and their father, his youngest son, Patrick, 36, recently took the toddlers into the ocean on boogie boards to get them ready to be surfers in the future.<\/p>\n
And perhaps the next generation of Long Beach lifeguards?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few Long Beach residents have as unique a life story as Dennis Carey. His family began frequenting the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[174344,131,133,145941,174345,132,129809,174346],"class_list":["post-440776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-dennis-carey","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-history","tag-long-beach-lifeguard","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-beach-ny","tag-long-beach-surfing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/439480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}