Jersey Shore Publications

Gordon Hesse

Authors' & Artists' Readings, Presentations, and Book Signings

Gordon Hesse on Lavallette beach, November 2005.

Gordon Hesse was raised in Roselle Park, New Jersey and at the seashore resort of Lavallette. He lifeguarded for ten years on three New Jersey beaches and one in Florida.

He studied architectural design for three years at Clemson University in South Carolina and then changed majors, earning a fine arts degree in English. During his academic career, he was a marginal athlete in baseball, football, rugby, and swimming.

After graduation, he traveled to Hawaii and worked as a lifeguard, bartender, freelance photographer, filmmaker's production assistant, and teacher.

After moving to Florida, while working as a deckhand on a shrimp boat that had mistakenly entered Cuban waters, he was arrested, accused of being a paramilitary operative, and imprisoned in Cuba for nearly ten months.

Upon his release, he became an investigator for the Ocean County Probation Department in New Jersey. Since then, he has been a writer, publication designer, and public relations counselor.

It was while meeting with generations of lifeguard friends that he realized the rich oral tradition of these men and women; he began interviewing guards from the '30s through the '90s, and this book took form.

Gordon Hesse lives in Ardencroft, Delaware and is currently finishing a screenplay about an obscure, 1526 Spanish expedition to Florida as well as a book about his experiences of being imprisoned in Havana fortresses.

Gordon Hesse on the stand at Lavallette beach, mid-1960s.