by Cris Italia
The task of swimming a quarter-mile in water that wasn't exactly the freshest, never mind the warmest, didn't phase him -- despite the fact that he's 50. Benson's age has never been a factor, not even here, at the annual Jones Beach lifeguard rookie test, where he was more than twice as old as most of the participants. The odds of completing the grueling test were against Benson, but you never would've known it by watching him, or talking to him.
More than 130 lifeguard wanna-bes turned out at Jones Beach's East Bathhouse pool on Sunday, competing for 22 openings at the seven New York State parks staffed by Jones Beach lifeguards. The number of jobs has been on the decline as the economy has worsened over the years. Lifeguard positions are in high demand, but due to budget cuts and returning lifeguards refusing to give up a good gig, few spots are available for rookies.
Benson wasn't battling for a job. He was just focused on completing what would be an exhausting day of tests. "If I get a position, I'm not going to take it because there's someone more hungry than me who really needs the job," Benson said.
So what was a 50-year-old defense attorney doing among teenagers and college kids? "This is a goal I set for myself," Benson said. An Oceanside resident, he began his career as a lawyer 25 years ago. It had been 31 yeas since he last patrolled the waters as a lifeguard, but this year he took the Nassau County certification test with his daughter Liana, 16.
Turning 50 has inspired Benson to take on other challenges that most his age might -- perhaps jealously -- regard as lunacy. On his birthday last August he took part in the "Swim Across America" event for charity. "It's been a year of tests for me," Benson said. With each test, the bar has risen higher.
Sitting in his dining room a day before he endured the toughest physical test of his life, Benson wasn't nervous, just afraid of being embarrassed. "The first event is the 100-yard swim," he said. "If I don't qualify for that I'll be ashamed."
Benson had been egged on by his swimmates. Four times a week, he works out at the Nassau Aquatic Center with other competitive swimmers who make up the AquaFit masters team. Two members of the group joined Benson on his quest.
On Sunday morning, he was up at 6 a.m. "The first thing I'm going to do is make sure I [move my bowels]," Benson said. "You don't know how important that is before partaking of an event like this."
He arrived at the East Bathhouse at 7, joining a large crowd of high-school, college-age and 20-something athletes nervously awaiting the start of the day's events. Joe Scalise, coordinator of the Jones Beach guard program, informed the gathering of the small number of job openings available. Despite the disappointing news, most of the crowd remained, filtering into the pool area for the first event.
Benson stayed loose, cracking jokes. A day earlier he explained how sometimes it's a constant struggle with negative energy. "I try to let my mind and body get set, and then I just go into a zone," he said.
In the courtroom, Benson said, he never has a problem with negative energy. "I remember cross-examining a witness one time," he said. "I felt at the time that it was the most powerful moment of the trial and I just went into a zone -- it was just me and the witness."
Still, Benson has always had trouble incorporating his confidence in the courtroom into his social activities. "In court it's just all about using your mind," Benson said. "I play in a band, and a lot of times I get that same negative energy because I'm up and there are other musicians in the audience. But eventually I just find that zone."
Benson's band, Plain Jane, was a result of a mid-life crisis. "When I was in my 40s, I joined a band called Jerry's Kids, and we played mostly Grateful Dead music," he explained. "Right now we're four dinosaurs, and we play with a 25-year-old female singer."
In addition to his early-morning workouts and long days in court, Benson finds time to be a kid again. He plays the bass guitar with passion, and admits that if he could support his family doing it, he would give up just about everything else for the love of music. He plays a couple of gigs a month, with his next one on June 20 at Cafe Oasis, 779 Brooklyn Ave., just off of Grand Avenue in Baldwin.
At about 8:43 on Sunday morning he dived into the pool to start the 100-yard-swim, and though it looked at times like he was struggling with the cold water, he finished four 25-yard laps in a time of just over 1 minute, 10 seconds -- less than five seconds below the maximum time of 1:15. He thereby qualified to move on to the next trial.
The threat of rain and nasty weather throughout the week had forced the second event, the quarter-mile open-water swim, usually held in the Atlantic, to Zach's Bay, not far from the Jones Beach Theater. But the 100-yard swim had taken a bit more out of Benson than he thought it would. "I'm not too thrilled to be out here right now," he said, staring into the cold but calm bay. At 9:43 his group was sent off with a starter's whistle, and Benson gamely bounded into the bay, then took a dive and started stroking. A seemingly endless 6 minutes and 54 seconds later, he stumbled back up on the beach, but his performance was hardly a disappointment: he finished ninth in a group of 22. To move on from the open-water swim, Jones Beach hopefuls simply have to finish it unaided.
Next up was the challenge he most feared: a 3/4-mile run on wet, mushy sand at the ocean's edge, with a maximum time of 6 minutes. "I've never been a runner, so this is the toughest event for me," he said before stretching. While trying to stay loose, he offered a typically deadpan prediction before heading to the starting line with his group: "Bet on the other guy."
Despite his tired legs and strong doubts, Benson crossed the finish line in 5:41, with 19 seconds to spare. "The whole time I had this Moby song in my head," he explained after catching his breath. "The fast beat kept me in stride."
The final event, back in the pool, was a 25-yard sprint to a rescue dummy, and a cross-chest carry of the dummy back to the other end of the pool. Maximum time: 1:10. By now Benson was confident -- no negative energy, despite his fatigue -- that he could knock off this challenge with ease. After breezing up and down the pool in just under 49 seconds and depositing the rescued dummy on the deck, Benson cracked, "Now I can leap tall buildings."
He had finished 65th out of some 80 participants who passed all four tests. But it was just for the challenge; this summer he won't be guarding the waters of Jones Beach. He knows for the first time, however, that he could.
The following day he would wake up at 4 a.m., meet his AquaFit colleagues for a 6:00 workout, and then, as he put it, "go represent alleged scum."
"Most people won't appreciate that I did this," Benson said. "But this is an everyday part of my life." He said that for now he could hold his head up high, and concentrate on the next obstacle. He still has two months before he hits 51, and there are still a few things left to accomplish.
