(Editor’s Note: The following is a series on the men and women who have spent their summers protecting all those who came to Ocean City for fun and safe vacation.)
OCEAN CITY — Many of the men and women who have served on the Ocean City Beach Patrol can attest to the fact the experience of guarding can be life changing. It could be something monumental like proving to yourself just how much strength and determination you have in the face of a crisis. Or it could be something as simple as who you might meet on the beach one day. No one probably knew this better than George Chester.
Chester was a Baltimore boy through and through. He graduated from Poly in 1963 and soon started classes at the University of Baltimore. Like a lot of kids from Baltimore, he looked to Ocean City during the summer months for a job and a little adventure.
It was 1964 when Captain Craig dropped him off at the stand on 90th Street. Ocean City had been growing by leaps and bounds since the Bay Bridge was finished and now the OCBP had been given the command to increase its presence all the way up to the Delaware line. Captain Craig must have seen something in Chester that he liked, because the stand he gave him was right in front of Hack Deeley’s summer cottage. Deeley had been on the OCBP with Captain Craig back in the 30’s, and his son, Sandy Deeley, had also just joined the patrol. The captain knew that the Deeley family would feed and look after the rookie guard.
Chester enjoyed his time guarding the north end of town. His skills as a guard impressed the officers and so they decided to move him downtown to 5th Street where the crowds were bigger and the rescues more frequent. He certainly missed the meals the Deeley family had been giving him, but he was glad to be sitting the stands near his roommates Wayne “Bru” Brubaker and Vern Rosenberger. Along with Deeley, the four made for quite a team, both on and off the beach.
When Hurricane Faith ran by the coastline on the Labor Day weekend in 1966, Chester, along with “Bru,” Rosenberger and Deeley faced the heaviest surf they had ever seen. “Bru” remembers that they “made over 40 pulls (rescues) each that Saturday. The current pulled so hard that on a couple of rescues, it took us swimming as far as 13th Street before we could swim in safely through the breakers. Our last pulls were well after the 5:30 p.m. blow off time.”
Because of his actions at the end of the summer and his record of service, Chester was promoted to sergeant in 1967 and “soon thereafter to lieutenant. He drove the Jeep along the beach stopping at the guard stands along the way and overseeing rescues and assisting if need be.” Summers at the beach and on the OCBP were a wonderful time for Chester but, as with most guards, “real life” came calling and decisions needed to be made.
It seems that the Deeley’s also had a daughter named Candy. Four years after meeting George on that 90th Street beach, she would marry him in 1968. They moved to Baltimore and began a family, but as Candy reports, “by 1987 we couldn’t resist moving to the beach with our three children giving them the opportunity to grow up in a town that we loved!”
Chester was admired and loved by all who knew him, especially those on the OCBP.
Sadly, he passed away when he was only 44 years old and has missed seeing the success of his children, John Chester, an award-winning filmmaker in California; Deeley Chester, owner of Coastal Surf supplies and topnotch Realtor in Ocean City; and daughter Cara, a successful Realtor in Baltimore. He would have taken so much joy in knowing his grandchildren, Rowan, Kade and Beaudie Chester.
Our thanks go out to Candy Chester for this story.