Renick Marsh, 83, who may have been the world’s oldest practicing lifeguard, retired from the pool at the Gulf Shores Aquatic Center earlier this month, but he’s still got a lot of learning and living to do, he said.

At 16, Marsh got his first job as a lifeguard, and since then, he’s rescued about 70 people and trained thousands of lifeguards, making pools and waterparks safer for people all over the country.

Marsh was a geologist by trade and worked for several major oil companies throughout his career. Lifeguarding was his way of giving back to the community, he said.

“I didn’t know enough to do Little League, and my kids weren’t interested in it,” Marsh said. “There weren’t that many swimming instructors or lifeguard instructors around, so I would do that as something for the neighborhood.”

In Houston, Texas, where Marsh lived and worked for much of his life, he started training lifeguards at waterparks. Waterparks are far more dangerous than pools, he said.

One of the first waterpark in Houston opened in the early 1970s.

“We trained 150 lifeguards over a weekend,” Marsh said. “About three weeks after the waterpark opened, a child drowned with three lifeguards sitting around. And we realized it took too long and the techniques were too complicated.”

So Marsh and his fellow instructors began developing a new method for training lifeguards.

“We taught four basic rescue techniques, all with rescue tube, so lifeguard doesn’t have to swim as well,” he said. “Also, we made it so the guard knows what area he or she is supposed to be guarding, and they have to scan that area every 10 seconds.”

This training method worked, and the waterparks trained by Marsh and his colleagues were much safer, he said.

“We were having real good luck safety wise, and people started coming to us for their training,” Marsh said.

Soon, the National Pool and Lifeguard Association was formed, and it began formally training lifeguard staffs at waterparks and pools across the country. Their training became the standard, and Marsh spent many of his weekends for about five years traveling with the association.

About 13 years ago, Marsh retired from geology and settled in Orange Beach with Helen Herring, who he reconnected with at their 50^th high school reunion.

He began working a few hours a week at the Gulf Shores Aquatic Center.

David Lloyd, a full-time lifeguard, worked with Marsh for five years.

“A lot of times, we’re not busy, so we’d sit together, and he’d tell me amazing stories of his life,” Lloyd said. “We’re both avid readers and we both subscribed to all the newspapers, so we had a lot in common to talk about — what we read in the paper that week or anything else.”

Lloyd said Marsh became a beloved member of the staff, and everyone respected him greatly.

But Marsh had no idea how much he had impacted his coworkers until they threw him a party when he announced his retirement from lifeguarding.

“I was stunned by my going away party,” he said. “I saw myself as an old semi-has been. So it was amazing how much more of an effect I had on people that I realized. They see me as a mentor. You never know what kind of impression you have on people.”

Marsh said just because he isn’t the world’s oldest lifeguard anymore, he doesn’t plan on sitting around at home. He is already skilled at woodcarving, and he’s recently been branching out into other art forms.

“I’m teaching myself to draw now, and that’s very satisfying,” he said. “As long as you stay interested in learning, it’s a very satisfying time.”