Murray Wolf, 87, of Avalon, the legendary no-nonsense beach patrol captain whose half-century reign inspired and guided generations of lifeguards, while aggravating some famous and not-so-famous beachgoers along the way, died Monday, Feb. 16, at AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center in Atlantic City following a stroke.
“He was probably the most loyal person I’ve known in my life,” said his wife of 43 years, Vicki Wolf. “Anybody who came into contact with him, he made them a better person, no question about it.”
“He had the highest of standards,“ said John Glomb, who served under him for decades. ”When the conditions were not favorable, he drove around the beaches and made sure the guards were on top of their bathers, making sure that nobody was in harm’s way. He had a record where in his 65 years, there was never a drowning. That’s a record that is absolutely spectacular.”
Not everyone appreciated Mr. Wolf’s brand of beach enforcement. In 1999, he famously tangled with then-WIP sports radio personality Angelo Cataldi over a beach tag, showing him no mercy. Cataldi endlessly railed about it on air, and never truly got over it, saying in 2016, as Wolf entered his 61st year on the beach patrol, “I do harbor ill will toward Murray Wolf, and I always will.” Cataldi did not respond to an email following news of Mr. Wolf’s passing.
Mr. Wolf brushed off the Cataldi encounter like he did most of his encounters on the beach, a place he patrolled with military precision, complete with nightly wave-offs, stand by stand, from his jeep. Rules were meant to be enforced. But he could laugh about it, even if Cataldi couldn’t.
There was also Frank Wilson, formerly of Chester County, who sued Avalon in 2001 and won $175,000, driven arguably mad after being repeatedly whistled out of the water when he tried to swim after 5 p.m. “We have the right to protect our bathers,” Mr. Wolf said at the time.
Within the ranks of his family — wife Vicki, sons Matthew, Erich, and Tyler, and his 10-year-old black Lab, Ruger — Mr. Wolf’s loyalty, kindness, and appreciation for Avalon’s simple pleasures were deeply admired. The same was true for the ranks of lifeguards, wrestling teams, his Pleasantville school district physical education classes, and the multiple championship South Jersey beach patrol teams he coached in Avalon with the utmost of pride.
Mr. Wolf rode his bike around Avalon almost to the end, and walked Ruger in the deepest of snows.
“He was happy to sit home and watch the football game, sit on the couch, yell at the dog for running in and out,” his wife said. “He loved his Avalon. There wasn’t one time we rode over the bridge into town when he didn’t say, ‘Oh, that was the best decision I made, moving to Avalon.’ He was just a content man, satisfied.”
His blunt style could rub some the wrong way. Vicki Wolf, who met her husband at the Princeton, Avalon’s iconic bar, spotting at first his muscular arms, she recalled, said she always knew when someone in town had had an uncomfortable encounter with Mr. Wolf when they would veer away from her in the supermarket. He led his patrols through a pandemic, hurricanes, and new technology: He vowed to fire any guard caught with a cell phone on the stand. “It says Lifeguard on Duty,” he said in 2016. “It’s a duty.”
“There was nothing phony about him,” Vicki Wolf said. “He was never one to take low blows about him. Not everybody liked him. He had enemies, but they respected him.”
“He took a lot of pride in Avalon doing well — that was in everything Murray did,” Glomb said. “He ran a tight ship. He ran a tight beach.”
In the offseason, Mr. Wolf coached championship wrestling teams and was a physical education teacher in the Pleasantville school district for 50 years. His son, Matt, took his place as Avalon beach patrol captain in 2021, and also coaches wrestling in Middle Township.
Matt Wolf said his father had a stroke on Nov. 11 and was hospitalized until his Feb. 16 death. It seemed to so many that he might live forever, given his lifelong physical fitness and vigor, the devotion to his routines of bike riding and dog walking through town. “I think people saw him as very serious when he was in that public spotlight,” Matt Wolf said. “He had a great sense of humor. He didn’t need to be out with a bunch of people. He was happy to be home with his family.”
The generations of guards who worked under him paid tribute to Capt. Wolf following his passing. “It was an honor to work with The Captain — there’s nobody quite like him,” Ryan Finnegan wrote on Facebook. “He taught his guards countless life lessons over the decades. Thousands of lives were saved because of him. The beaches in heaven are much safer now! Rest easy Capt.”
George Murray Wolf III was born Aug. 16, 1938, in Philadelphia to Elizabeth Gerhard and George Murray Wolf II and was raised on the Main Line. He and his family vacationed in Avalon from the time he was a child.
He graduated from Conestoga High School and, after briefly working in a steel mill, Mr. Wolf attended Western State College in Gunnison, Colo., where he competed in wrestling and won a team national championship. He graduated with a degree in physical education and later earned a master’s in educational administration from Rider University.
Mr. Wolf spent more than 50 years teaching physical education in Pleasantville. As head wrestling coach, he led the Pleasantville High School Greyhounds to the 1974 District 32 Championship. “He loved his job working with students and his colleagues at Leeds Avenue School,” his son wrote in the family obituary.
Mr. Wolf served as captain of the Avalon Beach patrol from 1967 to 2020, and served a total of 65 years on the patrol. His teams, competing in the storied lifeguard races every summer, won nine South Jersey Lifeguard Championships, and Mr. Wolf had the joy of coaching his sons in winning boats.
Mr. Wolf and his wife were fixtures at their sons’ football, wrestling, baseball, and track and field games and meets, when their sons were competitors and, later, when their sons became coaches themselves.
Ventnor’s retired beach patrol chief Stan Bergman, himself a legendary chief and coach, has called Mr. Wolf “a warrior.” “He’s battle-tested,” Bergman said in a 2016 interview. “They have a tough beach.”
“He was a very staunch competitor,” said Ed Schneider, chief of Wildwood’s beach patrol and also a wrestling coach. “I was always nervous going up against his teams. He commanded a presence around him. He made people push themselves to be the best.”
After Matt Wolf took his place as captain of the patrol, he would include his dad as much as possible, taking him in the jeep along the beach. Murray Wolf always attended the lifeguard races, talking to the guards about the David J. Kerr Memorial Races, a competition he began in 1984 to honor a guard who died of cancer.
In his final weeks, when the family came into his hospital room, his wife said, he would look for his boys, and “always blow a kiss and say I love you.”
“Every night I would get home, the dog would go sit on the deck and look down the street,” Vicki Wolf said. “It broke my heart. He was looking for Murray.”
In addition to his wife and their three sons, he is survived by another son, George Murray IV, and a sister. A son, Michael, died earlier.
Services will be at noon Friday, Feb. 27, at our Savior Lutheran Church, 9212 Third Ave., Stone Harbor, N.J. Visitation will be 10 to 11:45 a.m.
Donations may be made to the Middle Township Wrestling Program or the Helen L. Diller Vacation Home for Blind Children.
