On a beautiful day, a small boy went out splashing in the ocean when a rip current took hold and dragged him farther and farther from shore.

A then-17-year-old Greg Wilfert blew his whistle and grabbed a rescue board, plunging into the surf. Another man went with him to try to help save the boy. As they were swimming back, the second man said he couldn’t swim anymore, so Wilfert towed them both.

Straining to keep his head above water, Travis, the frightened little boy, asked Wilfert, “Are we going to make it?”

“I really don’t know,” Wilfert responded, struggling to stay afloat. Wilfert blew his whistle, a desperate plea for backup. A surfer came and scooped up the second man, freeing Wilfert to bring Travis back to shore.

It was Wilfert’s first rescue as a lifeguard at what was then Jordan’s Beach, and it made him realize that it wasn’t just a glamorous job. It was serious. “If I wasn’t there, they weren’t coming back in,” he said.

Since then, he’s rescued more than 100 people. He stopped counting after he hit that milestone.

Fifty-three years after he saved young Travis’ life, Wilfert, who has been the park manager of Scarborough Beach State Park since 1983, is still a lifeguard at the same beach he played at as a little kid.

On a recent afternoon, Wilfert approached the lifeguard stand from the middle of the beach in a dark gray, long-sleeve shirt and red trunks.

“I’ll show them what to do,” he said to Dave Currier, the lifeguard supervisor. Sunglasses hid Wilfert’s eyes, and a beard covered part of his sun-kissed face. He pulled his baseball cap, emblazoned with “GUARD” in red letters, down over his wispy bleach-blond hair.

A gaggle of lifeguards, high schoolers and college students, listened to Wilfert’s directions, rounding up equipment. He was their age when he started, and now, he mentors generation after generation of guards.

Currier, who has been lifeguarding with Wilfert for 43 years, said that he takes the job very seriously. Wilfert may laugh along with jokes about him continuing to be a lifeguard despite his age, Currier said, but “there’s a reason why he’s still doing it.”

“Greg has an unmatched passion for the beach and making sure everyone is safely enjoying it,” Currier said.

A LIFE ON THE WATER

Wilfert said he’s always found his way back to Scarborough Beach since he fell in love with it on his first day of work on July 2, 1972.

“It was a day like today,” he said. Not a cloud in sight, and the blue of the sky was softer and paler than the surf. “Low tide. The beach looked exactly like this but with no one on it.” No children digging in the sand. No families clustered in beach chairs. No tents set up to shield from the sun. He arrived at 9 a.m. on his first day, an hour early.

“I saw the scene here and said, ‘This is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen,’” Wilfert said.

John Casey, who bonded with Wilfert in high school over a mutual love of basketball and the water, lifeguarded alongside Wilfert for 30 years. It was Wilfert who got Casey the job in 1976. For decades, they sat in the lifeguard stand together.

“He’s the one who dragged all of us into it,” Casey said, a self-described “fraternity of young teenagers turned older men” who made lifeguarding a lifelong pursuit. “We got to share that beauty with him.”

“For Greg, the beach was always his foremost love,” he added. “He’s always been linked to it.”

And the beach has changed a lot since Wilfert started. He remembered the wild days of the 1980s and early 1990s, when booze was everywhere on the beach.

“Beer check,” he said. “No one wanted to do that duty.” He recalled a coworker getting their shirt ripped off in an altercation with a rowdy beachgoer. The beach started instituting cooler checks, and became more of a family-friendly space.

In 1993, the 2,000-foot-long stretch of beach became privately managed following state budget cuts, and Wilfert leased the land from the Sprague Corporation, the owners then, from 1993 to 1999.

At the time, he had five lifeguards and two people working out front to manage parking. “We started slow,” he said. Now, they have 11 lifeguards.

Wilfert went into business with the Sprague Corporation, forming Black Point Resource Management, and they have been managing the beach for 26 years. He said that all of the income is used to maintain the beach, and despite confusion, they don’t receive any money from the state.

NEW FRIENDS

Within the past couple years, Wilfert has been joined by three furry companions who enjoy the beach just as much as he does. He owns three water rescue Newfoundland dogs — Beacon, Buoy and Bell. Both Beacon and Buoy are officially trained, and Bell, a 1-year-old, is still learning.

Wilfert trains them in the water every other day, simulating victim situations and teaching them how to support lifeguards. “They know how to get out of a current,” Wilfert said. “It’s their instinct.”

Each dog can pull five or six people in the water. “A Newfoundland would beat an Olympic swimmer in a rescue any day,” Wilfert said. They haven’t had to make any rescues yet, he said, but they’re ready.

Every day, the dogs walk up and down the beach, a cute excuse to talk about water safety, Wilfert said.

And the dogs are part of Wilfert’s daily routine. He walks them at 4:30 or 5 a.m. each day before going to the beach to clean the bathrooms and bring out equipment. Wilfert only takes one day off every month during the summer season and that’s to get the dogs groomed.

Wilfert plans to lifeguard as long as he can.

“Greg is the beach,” Casey said. “He is Scarborough Beach.”

Wilfert has joked with Currier for years that their theme song is “Hotel California.”

“We can check out anytime but never leave,” Wilfert said.