Can’t forget Tony Deraga

The other day I got a phone call from a reader. She had read the

column on my early adventures in Corona del Mar and wanted to ask

about Tony Deraga.

I drew a blank. There was something familiar about the name, but

for the life of me, I couldn’t place him. I asked her to call me the

next day, which probably surprised her, but as I have galloped into

my 90s, or more accurately hobbled, I have noticed that while my

memory is certainly not what it once was, there’s a huge

inconsistency in how it functions. On some days, I feel like I could

lecture at Harvard Law School, and on others I’m surprised I

recognize myself in the mirror. I was hoping that in the next 24

hours the pendulum would swing back, and I would recall whatever it

was I once knew about Tony Deraga.

The next morning, I got up and went into the kitchen. There was a

note on a yellow legal pad in my illegible scribble: “Tony Deraga?” I

looked at that. What was the question mark for? Gradually, the memory

of the phone call came back, and I was horrified. Not know Tony

Deraga? He was one of the heroes of my youth.

Antar “Tony” Deraga was a Russian-born meteorologist. In 1919, he

was hired by the Orange County Harbor Commission to man a weather

station on the cliffs overlooking the channel mouth at Corona del

Mar. A legend was born.

While he did his meteorologist work and put up flags and warning

devices and kept track of the sun and moon and tides and all that

stuff that meteorologists do, the reason he became a legend was that

he kept saving people from drowning in the channel mouth.

That channel mouth was very dangerous. Nevertheless, people kept

trying to go in and out, often with disastrous results. Boats kept

turning over and spilling their passengers into the water.

When that happened, Tony would race down a long flight of steps

from his meteorological station to a dory he kept at the foot of

those steps. Then he would row out and save people -- oodles of

people. The local count was nothing short of astronomical, but even

the actual number was awesome. If someone had said they had seen Tony

Deraga walking on water, it would have been accepted without

question.

And so it happened that on a certain day in June of 1925, an

incident occurred that has been covered in meticulous detail in every

history of the city of Newport Beach that I have read. The launch

Thelma overturned in the channel mouth, spilling 17 men into the

water.

The great Duke Kahanomoku paddled out on his surfboard, and in

three trips saved seven men. While he was doing this, Charlie

Plummer, our local lifeguard, operating from the Balboa side, and

Tony Deraga, operating from his weather station, saved five men. Five

men drowned.

Every history features Duke Kahanomoku, Olympic gold medalist,

Hawaiian royalty and movie star. By any normal standards, his part in

the rescue would be big news, but to us locals? Nada.

“Hey, did you hear? Tony Deraga and Charley Plummer saved five men

today when the Thelma turned over in the channel mouth. Another guy

saved some others. How about that Tony? He’s something, isn’t he?”

We urchins followed Tony Deraga around like present day rock fans

follow the current heart throb. He came to Balboa to pick up his

mail, and it was one of my boyhood thrills to see my hero at the post

office, which was then in the Pavilion. The funny thing was that,

during the summer, I worked at the old Corona del Mar bathhouse,

spitting distance from Tony’s shack on the cliff, but I never went to

talk to him. One doesn’t approach Zeus without an invitation.

Forget Tony Deraga? I must be getting old. Or am I repeating

myself?

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.