Street renamed after legendary lifeguard
By Leigh Jones
The Daily News
Published May 24, 2008
GALVESTON — Leroy Colombo, Galveston’s best-known lifeguard, last
week received another posthumous honor when the city council voted
unanimously to give his name to a two-block stretch of 57th Street.
The name change will start at Seawall Boulevard and end at Maco
Street, just past the Kroger parking lot.
The street will be referred to as Leroy Colombo’s View and 57th
Street on signs.
The spot is appropriate because Colombo patrolled beaches in the area
while he was working as a lifeguard for the city of Galveston, said
Donald Mize, who requested the street naming.
“He saved a lot of lives right there along that stretch of
beach,” he told the city council.
Colombo is credited by the 1976 Guinness Book of World Records with
saving 907 lives, but in a short biography written for the council,
Mize said the real number should be more than 1,000. More than 90
rescues are not officially listed, Mize said.
Colombo was born in Galveston in 1905. A bout of spinal meningitis in
1912 left him deaf and mute, but his illness couldn’t keep him from
the Gulf of Mexico. His brothers taught him to swim as a way to help
him recover the full use of his legs.
When he was 18, Colombo was hired as a regular lifeguard for
Murdock’s bath house after serving as a volunteer lifeguard since
age 15.
According to Mize’s research, Colombo’s numerous rescues were a
regular feature in The Daily News.
He entered and won many endurance swimming races, including a 15-mile
swim in 1927 thought to be one of the longest ever staged at the time
in the United States for amateur swimmers. He completed the race in 11
and a half hours. The only other person to finish was Colombo’s
brother, Cinto, three-and-a-half hours later.
Colombo worked many different jobs during his life, continually
saving stranded swimmers but not being listed as an employee of the
Galveston beach patrol until 1945.
At 61 years old, Colombo was still patrolling the beaches and is
credited with saving 38 lives that year, according to Mize.
He retired the next year and died in 1974.
The Galveston Island Beach Patrol’s annual fundraiser is named for
Colombo, and Mize has submitted an application to the Texas Historical
Commission to have a historical maker created in his honor and placed
on the outside of the Galveston Island Convention Center.
LInk: http://galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=ac7db8145ce47c5a
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