Carmelo "Charles" Bertolino

Bertolino was never on the city payroll as a lifeguard. He fished for a living, baked at Graugnard's Bakery, and swam in the Gulf most mornings, for miles by some accounts. He and his wife Mabel had twenty-one children, including four sets of twins. The Red Cross gave him medals, and President Roosevelt commended him in 1936. After he died in 1960, neighbors raised money for a monument, and the Texas Senate passed a resolution of mourning in 1961. In 1994 the city council added his name to the stretch of 10th Street at the seawall.

What the plaque says

Carmelo "Charles" Bertolino (September 4, 1887 - March 8, 1960) Born in Galveston in 1887, Carmelo Bertolino was the son of Salvatore Bertolino (d. 1891) and Rosalia Trapani Bertolino (d. 1942), who immigrated to Texas from Palermo, Italy in the early 1880s. Salvatore Bertolino drowned in Galveston Bay when Carmelo was three years old. Carmelo married Mabel Cousins (1894-1937) in 1911 and became the head of a large family. He worked as a fisherman and as a baker at Graugnard's Bakery. He was an athletic man who swam in the Gulf every day until he was past 70 years of age. A volunteer lifesaver, he is credited with saving more than 500 people from drowning during his lifetime. The tragedy of that type of death had touched his own family; in addition to his father, he lost a brother and a son to accidental drownings in Galveston waters. Carmelo Bertolino was in Italy during the disastrous 1900 storm, but during the 1915 hurricane he was able to save many lives. His heroic efforts later were noted in official citations from the Texas Legislature and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. A monument in his honor was erected shortly after his death, and the Galveston City Council named 10th Street at its intersection with the seawall "Bertolino's View." Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 0.4 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 1.0 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.2 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 1.2 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.

More markers nearby

• General Sidney Sherman — 0.3 mi
• The Rt. Rev. Monsignor Marius Etienne Chataignon — 0.4 mi
• St. Paul United Methodist Church — 0.4 mi
• George Washington Chapter - DAR — 0.4 mi