Rockaways Chief Lifeguard Janet Fash

Janet Fash has been working as a New York City lifeguard for nearly half a century and became the first woman chief lifeguard in 1988, putting her in charge of drilling new recruits. As the city faces an ongoing lifeguard shortage that has meant closed beaches and reduced pool hours, Fash has been one of the most vocal critics from the inside, calling out the nepotism and corruption in her union and the way it sometimes staffed the field with lifeguards who couldn’t swim well enough to do the job. But before all this, Fash was living in the Rockaways as a teen, breaking into a male-dominated lifeguard culture, and chugging kegs on the beach. We spoke to Fash about her early years as a lifeguard, how the food scene in the Rockaways has changed, and the time she saved a swimmer after drinking one of Connolly’s famous piña coladas.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I grew up near Prospect Park. One of our neighbors took us to the Prospect Park YMCA. It was $25 per year for the whole family. Myself and my siblings, there were seven of us, we were on the swim team there, so swimming was early for us. We went to Coney Island as kids, but then my parents got a bungalow in Rockaway on 93rd Street and, ironically, that year I was 17 and I didn’t want to go to Rockaway. I wanted to stay in Brooklyn with my friends.

My friend Barbara talked me into lifeguarding. The first year I was a weekend lifeguard was 1979. The next year I worked full time and my sister Helen and I got assigned to my brother’s shack and he wasn’t happy. We were cramping his style. I rented a bungalow down from 101 Deli that was $600 for the summer. And it was the time when it was new to have women lifeguards. Now there’s a separate female and male locker room, but at that time we shared the locker room with the guys. I walked into the shack one day and a male lifeguard dropped his pants right next to the front door when I was entering. It was designed to rattle me. But I told him, “I wouldn’t be showing that off if I were you — it’s no prized package.” As a female lifeguard, you never got to take a shower without your bathing suit. And sometimes they would rip the curtain down. So we survived a lot of things. We were breaking into a male-dominated field at the time, and we proved ourselves in the ocean. That year I went in for a rescue and I wound up saving my chief right near the 86th Street rocks, which still is a crazy place for rip tides.

Fash doing an exercise drill on a catamaran in 1986.
Photo: Janet Fash

My mother didn’t want me to be a lifeguard because of all the wildness at that time. They had these big parties on the beach they called Caveman Conventions and I have a memory of going to one of those parties then coming home and sleeping right outside on the porch so I didn’t wake them up. There were tons of kegs. You had to finish the keg, just like I have to eat everything on my plate. So those were terrible. They were fun times, but I’m surprised that we got up in the morning.

When I started, there were two shifts. There was 9 to 5 and 11 to 7. And you sat by the chair or you went for your training drill, which for me was running then going for a swim. You had to lock the lifeguard station after-hours. At times if we felt like something was going to happen, we hung around down the block at Connolly’s. We had to go to the bar first to get overtime. It was bizarre to me. I remember at 97th the cops would be there and I said to one, “Listen, we’re leaving because we have to. We’re down the bar at Connolly’s. If something happens, come get us.” We knew something was going to happen, and I have a memory of drinking a piña colada when he came and got us, then we were diving and getting someone out of the water. And the thing is, it’s a two-minute window of opportunity for someone to actually be alive when you can get them from a submersion. The beach is never really “closed” — there is no door. Why wouldn’t you just put crews of people in trucks spread out down the peninsula — downtown, midtown, and uptown — to patrol the beach when swimming is not permitted, able to spring into action and make a rescue? But we have been under the stranglehold of these union managers, and they were forever at their own self-serving interests, not of the interests of the public or the lifeguards. There’s so much more that could be done.

Fash at Connolly’s drinking a piña colada with the late chief lifeguard Pat Rocourt.
Photo: Janet Fash

Fash (lower right) on the NYC All Women Lifeguarding Tournament team in 1985.
Photo: Janet Fash

I remember one time, in the late 1980s, they sent me a lifeguard. Anytime a lifeguard was sent to me, I wanted to see how they swam. And I called up the borough coordinator and I said, “He can’t be in the shack. He can’t swim.” And he says, “Oh, he’s so-and-so’s brother.” I said, “Yeah, well, he can’t be a lifeguard.” That lifeguard could swim but not like a lifeguard, more like a patron with his head out of the water swinging it back and forth. So for years they’ve been doing that. Now I think it is good that the Parks Department and the union went to arbitration and negotiated the 300-yard untimed swim for the shallow-water pools. They just have to get that out of the union guy’s hands, the lifeguard school, then they can really get the lifeguard force staffed up.

There used to be large crowds arriving on the trains from East New York, Brooklyn; Queens; and the Bronx. The beaches were packed. The crowds have changed in that there are more people now coming from Manhattan, Long Island City, and Williamsburg.

There used to be a lot of broken glass on the beach. As a chief lifeguard, I was always telling the lifeguards, “It’s a 4-year-old who’s going to get cut — they’re going to play in the sand with their fingers.” But that is something that I think is better now, although there is still a lot of garbage that citizens throw on the beach. For the first two weeks what I would do is pick up along the high-tide line.

It’s food that changed in Rockaway the most. I never liked to get the burgers and the greasy fries; I didn’t eat at the concessions at the beach. I would bring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or they would have these heroes at the 101 Deli that were unbelievable, they were so big. You could also cash your checks there. Then in 2008, all of the food changed. I remember Conrad, now from Uma’s restaurant, brought these dumplings up to this coffee shop that was there right at 97th. And I followed him. I saw him go with some food, and I was like, Whoa, what’s that?