VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — I recently visited the Virginia Beach Oceanfront to check out a piece of local history at the Virginia Beach Surf & Rescue Museum.
"It's about 14 feet long, weighs around 130-some pounds and can float" the museum's Executive Director Dana Sizemore said when describing a surf and rescue paddleboard from the 1930s. "They would actually use those vehicles to go and save people, bring them in from drowning and take them into the beach."
In the 1930s, tourism was really starting to take off at the Oceanfront and the newly-formed beach patrol would have paddleboards, like the one pictured above, to help with ocean rescues.
"The fact that those fellows back then were fit enough to not only handle something like that, but to manage them properly to be able to save somebody who's panicking and bring them to the beach [and] navigate that through the waves, it's just impressive," said Sizemore.
Lifeguards still use surf and rescue paddleboards today, but they are now much faster and lighter and weigh only about 10 to 12 pounds.
"We're so grateful to have these pieces here to be able to think about how that piece right there could have brought in somebody that we were related to, you know, that was here on vacation," said Sizemore.
The Virginia Beach Surf & Rescue Museum is located at 2401 Atlantic Avenue. It is open Wednesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
