Tim Hawk
Photography

Earl Paul retired as a pipefitter 26 years ago, but these days he has a new “job” that some people would pay to call their own.

The 85-year-old sits on the beach all day most everyday of the year.

That’s it.

For the past 26 years — by his estimate, some 8,500 days — Paul has pulled up a chair, staked out a spot and sat on the beach in Ocean City.

He has made plenty of friends, helped countless kids learn how to boogie board and has been fed by strangers that thought he was homeless.

And it all started with one phone call.

Sitting beneath a beautiful July afternoon sky wearing blue-tinted Oakley sunglasses, one of 24 pairs he has, he talked about how the elements came together for him to find his passion for relaxation.

“I was the perfect storm,” he said.

Paul and his wife Cass moved to Ocean City in 1995.

Paul met Cass Realey when they were both 16 years old and they married four years later. Paul grew up in the Frankford section of Philadelphia and worked as a pipefitter. Once their four kids left the house Cass began working at a roller skating rink.

They ended up in “America’s greatest family resort” when Cass was searching for a weekend rental at the Shore. A vendor working at the rink handed her a business card for a condo as a possibility. But when she called the condo office she was told that they don’t have weekend rentals.

Just before she hung up, the man on the other end of the phone said something that would change Paul’s life forever.

“He says, ‘Wait a minute, I know a couple”’ who have a rental available, said Paul. Paul and his wife began renting just weekends over the course of two years until deciding to live there year-round.

“I never in a million years thought I would live at the Shore. I was a rowhouse guy in Philadelphia and I thought I’d always be that rowhouse guy.”

His wife, a smoker, struggled with emphysema for years and died when she was 61 years old, just two years after making the move to the Shore. They were married for 41 years but she was in his life for close to 45.

“She was always my life,” he said.

He struggled with his wife’s passing to the point he said where he was just crawling around his living room floor. He knew he needed help getting through the pain.

“I got to do something and something came to me and said, ‘You better go to the beach, you better go to the beach.’”

And that’s what he did.

At first, he didn’t feel any better and after a week or two he walked to the edge of the water looking for guidance.

“I said ‘God, this is not working. I thought it would work but it’s not,’” he recalled. Soon after he began to feel a little better but still wasn’t himself. He said it took about four years to really get used to life without Cass.

He believes a long grieving process shows whether you had a good marriage or not. “I was with her all the time.”

Paul credits the beach for getting him through and he has been going ever since.

Working outside as a pipefitter, he was used to the elements so anything the Jersey Shore weather had to offer he was ready for. Plus, he was retired and once he was alone he needed something to do.

And with this job, he gets to make the rules.

“The rule is you have to do three hours,” he said, so just walking your dog on the beach doesn’t count.

He sits on the beach in all four seasons. In the summer he normally stays until the sun begins to set, in the winter it varies depending on the temperature.

“That’s why nobody, nobody will ever even try to do my record.”

He said he has sat on the beach when the eye of hurricanes passed by, endured freezing temperatures and even shoveled snow to get to the beach.

“The more I do it the stronger I get.”

The only weather that will keep him from his job are high winds and driving rain.

He sets up camp just off the Plymouth Place beach access ramp by the fence. Two or three umbrellas comprise his setup with “Beach Bum ‘One’” embroidered on two of them. He will tell you he spends more than 96% of the year on the beach and, of the 26 years he’s been doing it, there were four years where he never missed a day.

“I don’t have any stress. When I get down here, I turn my chair this way,” he says, while pointing to the ocean, “and I put the world behind me.”

Most days start at 8 a.m. when he grabs his newspaper and a coffee and takes the elevator from his second-floor condo down to get his beach cart. From there, it’s a quick two-minute walk — less than a tenth of a mile — pushing the cart up the boardwalk ramp, across the weather-beaten planks, up the beach access ramp and finally through the soft sand to reach his spot. Inside his cart are his umbrellas, tools, a radio, beach chairs and other essentials.

“That’s why I am in good shape, but that’s part of the job,” he said about the exercise he gets pushing his cart back and forth from the beach. Another reason, he says, is because he never drank or smoked.

Once settled in, conversations with visiting friends range from the beach report, to what’s going on in the world, to who’s on the beach and how are they behaving.

One of Paul’s many visitors is Jeff Morrison, who is from Ocean City and is a speech therapist in Florida. Every summer Morrison, who has a second home in the same complex as Paul, comes back to the Jersey Shore and takes up residence right next to his friend on the sand.

Morrison introduced himself to Paul 26 years ago when he said he just had to meet the man he saw every day at the beach and who was always out boogie boarding.

“He’s an inspiration. Everybody he meets he builds them up,” said Morrison, adding that Paul is generous with his time with other beachgoers and is willing to teach any kid the art of boogie boarding.

Morrison said that when he retires he wants to walk down the beach path Paul has paved out and let the ocean air preserve him, like it has his friend.

An overcast, windy and cold August morning forced Paul to travel his path to the beach a little later than usual. A blue plastic bag covered his right foot as he struggled to set up camp. The bag was to protect an injury he sustained five days earlier that forced him to miss three beach days.

“It actually made a snapping noise,” he said about the piece of boardwalk that lodged in his foot. He was walking back to the beach after putting on his wetsuit to boogie board when the splinter found him.

“Why should I be punished for something I had no control over,” he mused, once he sat down, thinking about missing the three days. He said if he could have made it down he would have.

As the rain began to fall he sat dry under his red umbrella turned into a makeshift tent with the use of a tarp.

“I can’t let mother nature win.”

As he watched people begin to pack up and head off the beach he said he felt bad the weather wasn’t cooperating for them.

“I feel very sad for the people, they wait 52 weeks to come down here and enjoy themselves.”

Paul figures his injury was a sign for him to slow down. The three-time cancer survivor rarely takes a day off and rides the waves for hours when he is out.

And holidays are no time to rest. Paul recalls one frigid Thanksgiving day someone brought him a turkey dinner, complete with shoofly pie, thinking he was homeless. Another time, during a beach replenishment project, a worker offered him $20.

Even a worldwide pandemic couldn’t slow him down. When the city closed the beach in March of 2020 he said he snuck on by going under the boardwalk and avoiding the police but eventually was caught.

“I cannot get the virus if I go to the beach,” he said to the police when they confronted him and continued on. An hour later they came back and handed him a warning stating he would be fined $1,000 a day if he continued.

But where there’s a will there’s a way and since Paul makes his own rules, he came up with a solution — he set up camp on the west side of the boardwalk on a small patch of sand.

It still counts as a beach day, he said.

“We were in the sand, there was no doubt it was legal, what I did.”

He did this for six weeks and of course wasn’t alone as his friend Scott Michel, of Horsham, Pennsylvania, joined him. Michel also sits with Paul during the winter months, trading in a bathing suit for much warmer clothes.

Paul’s lifestyle is different than most and he is a magnet for those that go to his beach year after year.

“I get younger every year.” He turns 86 in October.

“It was sort of like meeting a hero,” said Justine Purtell of Cincinnati. Justine and her husband Steve have known Paul for approximately 20 years and, like most people, met him on the beach.

Small talk encompassed their encounters at first but then over the years, their relationship grew to the point where Steve, a lawyer, wrote Paul’s will.

During the Purtells’ annual week-long vacations in Ocean City, Paul has taken care of their family in his own ways — teaching their kids how to boogie board and how to read the waves, and bringing extra umbrellas for them to use.

Steve said that Paul’s beach duty, and his ability to stay young all these years from it, has inspired him to try and do the same by staying active and being outside a lot.

“I just don’t feel like I’ve done nearly as much for him as he’s done for me and my family,” said Steve.

As the warm breeze turns cooler and the days shorter Paul will still be on the beach doing his thing. The absence of people around him doesn’t bother him.

“From now to June I got it made,” he said.

He won’t have to worry about people crowding him, blocking his view, loud music or getting hit by a football. And he has until Thanksgiving to still ride the waves.

“The ocean is medicine. You can live another 10 years if you get in that water.”

Remember he makes the rules.