Longtime Southampton Town Lifeguard Hangs Up His Whistle

When John Neumann was a young teenager, he got a job washing dishes in the kitchen at the Southampton Bath and Tennis Club. The heat in the kitchen during that summer in the 1970s was stifling, and during his shifts, he kept thinking about one thing: how much he wished he was swimming in the ocean water that was just steps away instead.

Before long, he put together a plan that would combine his desire to be in the water with his need for gainful employment. Neumann enrolled in junior lifeguarding courses that were being offered at a local indoor pool, anxiously awaiting the day he’d turn 16 and be eligible to take the ocean lifeguard test. In 1981, he achieved that milestone, passing the test and taking a job with Southampton Town, as a guard at Scott Cameron Beach in Water Mill.

On Sunday, September 4, at 5 p.m., he finished his last official shift as a town lifeguard, hopping off the stand at nearby Mecox Beach, capping off a 41-year career as a Southampton Town lifeguard.

A love for the beach and for being at the ocean — and respect and reverence for the importance of lifeguarding — was instilled in Neumann from the time he was a small child. His parents grew up in Sag Harbor and Southampton, and when Neumann was a child, the family were members at Southampton Bath and Tennis, and would go to the beach constantly. Before starting a family, Neumann’s father worked as a lifeguard at Mecox in the 1950s.

When John Neumann finally achieved his teen dream of passing the lifeguard test, he initially planned on getting a job as a guard at the private bath and tennis club — until he realized that part of the lifeguarding duties also included setting up umbrellas, raking the beach and cleaning the bathroom. At the time, his mother, Patricia Neumann, was a member of the Southampton Town Board, and one day when he went to visit her at Town Hall, she introduced him to Allyn Jackson, who was the Southampton Town Parks and Recreation director at the time. They both convinced him to lifeguard for the town, and the rest was history.

Neumann initially lifeguarded at Scott Cameron Beach, which at the time had much smaller crowds than the more popular town beaches nearby like Flying Point and Sagg Main. Nearby Mecox was also more of a hidden gem, although it had some name recognition, while Scott Cameron was virtually an unknown to many people.

“It was just me and one other guard, and occasionally they’d send a guard over from Flying Point so there would at least be three of us,” Neumann said, recalling those early days. “But no one really knew of that beach. No one would show up until 11 a.m.”

Ocean lifeguarding is often a summer job for teens and college students, with a few older adult lifeguards scattered in the mix, many of whom are teachers and thus have the summer off, enabling them to make a bit of extra money during the time they’re not in school. Neumann did not necessarily intend to be a lifeguard for more than four decades, but the somewhat unexpected path his “day job” took him on ultimately allowed for it.

After a stint serving in the U.S. Army, Neumann planned on pursuing a career as a police officer, earning his degree from John Jay College in Manhattan. While he was waiting for a call back for a police job, he took a job working security at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. Before long, he was asked to work in the human resources department at the hotel, and eventually made a career out of working in HR for hotels. He worked for Hyatt for nearly 20 years, a job that gave him weekends off. He and his wife, Danielle Neumann, started a family and settled in Williston Park in Nassau County, but would travel east on weekends in the summer to spend time at the beach.

It seemed like a natural fit to just keep lifeguarding on the weekends, Neumann said.

“I never really called it work. I would be there anyway, and my wife is a beach bum, so I thought, why not be with my family at the beach and get paid for it?”

Neumann pointed out that he could have made more money working for a private ocean beach club as a guard, but said working for the town had a special kind of appeal.

“As my mother said once, it’s almost like a calling, civil service work,” he said. “There’s just something about working for the public. The people that are [at the beach] come back all the time and you get a sense that they really appreciate when you help them out. And I’m a working guy, too, so it was that type of thing. They appreciate you and you appreciate them saying thank you.”

Neumann made plenty of rescues in his more than 40 years of work at the beach. There was a memorable incident on a day with punishing shore break. A man had gone down hard, on his head, and Neumann immediately jumped off the stand and into the water. When the man emerged from the waves, Neumann initially thought what he was seeing was the man’s toupee having been displaced. Instead, he quickly realized, the force of his head hitting the rocky bottom had caused a large gash and what he thought was a hairpiece was actually the top of the man’s scalp, which had been peeled back from the force of hitting the bottom so hard.

Aside from the obvious gruesomeness of that injury, what Neumann remembers about that day and that particular rescue is how “everybody came together at that moment,” and each lifeguard on duty fulfilled the role he or she had trained for in that moment.

He also recalled that during that rescue and many others, it was always comforting to see how other beachgoers were eager to help. Among the regulars who would come to Mecox was a doctor and an ER nurse, and Neumann said he always appreciated that they were willing to lend a hand when necessary.

Over the years, Neumann became a reliable veteran at the beach and within the town lifeguard ranks. After his own stint serving in the Army in the late 1980s, he returned to the beach as a lieutenant (a role now known as assistant chief) and then became captain in 1988. He briefly served as chief of all Southampton Town beaches for a few weeks, which required him to oversee six Southampton Town beaches, but eventually that role was split between two people, with Ann Naughton running the western Southampton Town beaches — that group includes Ponquogue, Tiana and Pikes in the Hampton Bays/East Quogue/Westhampton area — with Neumann handling Flying Point, Sagg Main, Mecox and Scott Cameron. Sean Crowley eventually took over that job from Neumann in 1992, and still runs the eastern beaches today, while Naughton has remained the chief of the western town beaches.

Neumann continued serving as a lifeguard, even after his job working in HR ended. He became the primary caregiver at home, taking care of his children: Grace, now 27, and Jack, 24. Like his father and grandfather before him, Jack took the lifeguard test as a teenager and has worked alongside his father at Mecox for the past nine years. Grace is now a nurse, while Jack is going to be a teacher, a job that could enable him to have an even longer tenure as a lifeguard than his father, Neumann pointed out.

“He could end up being there longer than I am,” he said with a laugh.

Jack said he’s not sure about that, but said that he appreciated how his father paved the way in lifeguarding for him at an early age.

“I joke with him that I wonder if he made me learn how to swim before I learned how to walk,” he said. “It was always a matter of when, not if I would be a lifeguard. I still remember the first rush of adrenaline I got as a little kid when I went in the water with him on a huge wave day, and my mom being nervous that my dad was taking me in, in such rough conditions, but I loved it.”

Neumann went back to weekday work 12 years ago, taking a job as the aquatic supervisor for Lifetime Fitness in Syosset, but said this summer he felt the time was finally right to give up the gig he’d had since his teen years.

“It’s weird to think you never had weekends off for 41 years in July and August,” he said.

Particularly in the latter years of the job, Neumann had wisdom that he would often impart to the rookie guards he sat alongside.

“I tell them, this can either be the best job you’ve ever had or it can the worst job you’ve ever had if you don’t do something correctly,” he said, adding that he made the point to try to drive home the importance of following training and protocol while on the job. “If you don’t do something the right way and something bad happens, you’ll never forget that day.”

He said he’s proud of the fact that the town has never lost anyone at a guarded beach, which he said is “a big testament” to all the people in the Parks and Recreation department. He commended Crowley for always bringing on quality staff, and said that being able to work alongside him is one of the reasons he stayed in the job for as long as he has.

He also credited East Hampton Town lifeguards John Ryan and John Ryan Jr. — who have run those beaches for years and are credited with starting the town’s wildly successful junior lifeguard program and creating the East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue Squad — with providing help over the years as well, occasionally sending East Hampton Town guards to help out at Sagg Main when there were lifeguard shortages. Neumann added he’s also happy to see how much growth Southampton Town’s junior lifeguarding program has seen over the last few years, and said he’s happy to see that Southampton Village now has its own volunteer ocean rescue squad as well, following in the footsteps of the nearby towns.

“It’s really evolved from the early days,” Neumann said. “When it was just me and two other guards sitting at Scott Cameron, with the cut ripping out into the ocean.”

Crowley said that Neumann has been a crucial part of that evolution.

“John has always been safety first,” Crowley said. “He’s been in on hundreds of rescues and medical emergencies. He advanced lifeguarding in our eastern section of Southampton in so many ways.”