The lifeguard chairs at South Beach have been empty since September 8. No red flag, no yellow flag, no green flag. The city stopped raising them the same day it stopped staffing the towers, which means for the first time all season, South Haven's most-used beach is back to exactly what it was for the 25 years before this summer: swim at your own risk, full stop.
That's worth sitting with, because the season that just ended wasn't a formality. It was the first time in a quarter century that South Beach had trained lifeguards on the sand, and the number everyone quotes from it, nearly 800 calls for service, tells you almost nothing on its own. The number that matters is what those calls actually were, and it isn't what most people assume.
What 754 Calls Actually Contained
Speaking to the city council in July, Police Chief Adam DeBoer broke down the 754 calls lifeguards had logged in less than two months of active duty. Sixteen were rescues. Two hundred seventeen were "preventions," meaning a guard spotted someone swimming somewhere unsafe and got them out before it became a rescue. One hundred fifty-seven were enforcement actions, mostly guards reminding beachgoers of a new rule against floaties in the water.
Do the arithmetic and rescues make up about two percent of the total. The other 98 percent was a guard noticing a problem before it became one, which is a different kind of work than most people picture when they picture a lifeguard. DeBoer put it plainly to the council: the crew was not sitting on their hands. One of the 16 rescues came in June, when a swimmer exited the water at South Beach, started talking to guards, and then went unresponsive. The lifeguard team performed CPR and used a defibrillator to revive them on the spot, before paramedics arrived. That's the kind of save the season's headline number was built on, not dramatic open-water pulls but a crew positioned to catch a medical emergency in the ninety seconds that mattered.
By the time hours scaled back in mid-August and the program wound down for good after Labor Day weekend, the season's full tally sat at close to 800 calls, 16 rescues, and zero fatalities. That last number is the one that took 25 years to earn.
Twenty-Five Years to Get Here
South Haven had lifeguards on its beaches for roughly four decades, going back to at least 1968. In that stretch, advocates who later pushed for the program's return point to about two drownings. The city disbanded the program in 2001, a decision made in part on advice that having no lifeguards would reduce the city's legal exposure in the event of a drowning. In the 25 years that followed, there were 12 documented drownings at South Haven beaches, according to the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, and three wrongful-death lawsuits against the city.
Two of those years mark the turning points that actually moved the city council. In August 2009, 45-year-old Marty Jordan died trying to save his son and other family members at South Beach. The lawsuit that followed led to what's now called the Marty Jordan Beach Safety Program, the callboxes, warning flags, and signage that have stood in for guards ever since. Then in 2022, 19-year-old Emily MacDonald and her boyfriend, 22-year-old Kory Ernster, drowned at South Haven. Her mother, Lisa MacDonald, became one of the most persistent voices pushing the city to change course, alongside former lifeguard Sean Russell, who had made a channel rescue near the North Pier back in 2012 and had been petitioning the council to bring guards back since 2019.
The council finally voted in November 2025 to move forward with Phase 1 of a lifeguard program, built around a feasibility study the city paid a project management firm, Double Hall Solutions, $55,000 to produce. That report recommended starting with 10 lifeguards at South Beach only, expanding to 18 to 24 guards covering both South and North beaches by 2028.
From there it moved fast by city-government standards. David Figueredo, who had spent seven years lifeguarding on Lake Michigan's shore in Evanston, Illinois, and once oversaw five municipal beaches and 90 seasonal guards there, was hired in April as beach safety manager and chief lifeguard. He put eight candidates through a two-week academy and training drills in cold, choppy early-season water, including a 500-meter swim prerequisite that goes beyond standard Red Cross requirements. Guards took their first watch at South Beach on Memorial Day, May 25, with Dave Benjamin of the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, an advocate for South Haven lifeguards since 2012, on hand to see it happen.
Who Pays for a Lifeguard Chair
None of this came free, and the city didn't pretend otherwise. To help fund the roughly $481,000 estimated cost of Phase 1, South Haven restructured beach parking starting May 15, raising the weekly parking pass to $50 and switching from a flat $10 daily fee to a $3 hourly rate. City officials projected the changes would generate about $800,000 a year, with a portion earmarked for the lifeguard program and the rest going toward the beach fund that also covers cleaning, maintenance, and capital projects like the South Beach concession and bathroom building.
It's worth being clear about what that money bought and what it didn't. Even at the height of the season, South Beach was the only guarded beach in the city. North Beach, Woodman Beach, Oak Street Beach, and every other public access point stayed unguarded all summer, same as they've been since 2001. City Manager Kate Hosier said as much when the program launched: if residents wanted a guarded beach, South Beach was the one to choose.
What Actually Changed Last Week
This is the part that matters for anyone who still walks the beach after Labor Day. The city didn't just send the lifeguards home on September 8. It also stopped raising the beach safety flags, the same green, yellow, and red system that's told swimmers about rip current risk for years, and it stopped renting out the beach wheelchairs. Lifeguards and beach enforcement attendants won't resume their posts until the 2027 season.
That means the entire warning infrastructure locals have leaned on, not just the guard in the chair but the flag on the pole, goes dark for the off-season, even though plenty of people are still in the water past Labor Day. If you're the kind of resident who takes a late-September swim or walks the pier when the wind kicks up, the beach is running on the same information it ran on for 25 years: your own read of the water, nothing more.
What's Next
The plan on paper still calls for expansion. Phase 2, slated for 2028, would bring the guard count up to 18 to 24 and extend coverage to North Beach. Until then, South Beach gets one guarded season a year, Memorial Day to Labor Day, and everything else in South Haven stays exactly as it's always been.
The 12-drownings-in-25-years number was the argument that finally got lifeguards back on the sand. The zero-fatalities number from this first season is the one that will decide whether the city keeps investing in the next phase. One summer isn't a trend line, but it's the first real data point South Haven has had in a generation, and it's the reason this story is worth watching past this week's empty towers.
South Haven has always been a town people fall in love with slowly, over long walks on South Beach and quiet mornings on the pier, which is exactly why stories like this one matter to the people who already call it home. If a summer spent near this shoreline has you thinking about what it would take to make that permanent, Amy O'Sullivan has spent her career watching this stretch of Lake Michigan up close. Get your home valuation and find out what your place in South Haven is worth today.
