Peter Leroy Colombo

On a spring morning in 1928 a gasoline fire broke out on a tugboat at Galveston's Pier 20. Colombo, who was deaf, felt the pier shake before he understood why. Texas Monthly reports that he swam under burning oil to reach two drowning sailors, knocked one unconscious when he grabbed him, and collapsed on the beach after swallowing gasoline. Newspapers still called him a deaf mute, though he could speak. A year earlier he had swum fifteen miles of the Gulf in eleven and a half hours, finishing three and a half hours ahead of his brother Cinto.

What the plaque says

Peter Leroy Colombo (December 23, 1905-July 12, 1974)Born in Galveston, Peter Leroy Colombo overcame disabilities to become a highly accomplished lifeguard. Born in 1905, Colombo lost his hearing, speech and use of his legs at the age of seven, due to meningitis. His brothers took him to the Texas coast where he swam, regaining use of his legs, though his hearing never returned. In 1915, Colombo began to attend the Texas School for the Deaf in Austin, where he learned to read lips and communicate in sign language, and where he also continued to train in swimming. He returned to Galveston in 1921 and soon joined the Surf Toboggan Club, a group of volunteer lifeguards.Colombo became a hired lifeguard at the age of 18. In a time of segregation, he would go on to save hundreds from drowning, regardless of race, over a career spanning approximately 50 years. In addition, Colombo set many endurance and speed records in swimming matches, often participating in races that were up to 30 miles long. He was also a pioneer surfer on the Galveston beaches.Colombo officially retired in 1967, but continued to swim and serve as a lifguard when he was able. When Peter Leroy Colombo died in 1974, he was recognized with a moment of silence by the Texas State Legislature. He had officially saved over 900 people from drowning, with many other rescues going unrecorded. In 2005, the natatorium at the Texas School for the Deaf was named in his honor. Today, Peter Leroy Colombo is remembered as an individual who did not allow disabilites to limit him, risking his life to rescue hundreds along the beaches of Galveston. (2008)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 0.5 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• Moody Mansion — 2.6 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 2.8 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 — 3.1 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.

More markers nearby

• Burial Site of David G. Burnet — 0.2 mi
• The Rev. Henry P. Young — 0.3 mi
• William Tennant Austin — 0.3 mi
• The Original Galveston Seawall — 0.5 mi