A former Avalon resident recently donated a photo and a Horn Shark horn necklace to the Dive Museum on Catalina Island.
In 1962 Marc Loopesko was a multi-summer camper at Camp Fox on Catalina Island. He was a second-generation family member to camp there as his father, Larry, was there for years as a camper in the 1930s and ’40s. Larry was a lifeguard at the St. Catherine Hotel back in the late ’40s and early ’50s.
During his time as a camper, Marc became good friends with the camp director Jon Hardy. Because of his good rowing capabilities, Jon always asked Marc to row the chase boat for his daily scuba dives. At age 11, Marc was an avid snorkeler, but not a certified scuba diver. As such, he could not go down with Jon and the other camp managers and just followed their bubbles on their daily dives from the surface.
On one dive, Jon and his buddies discovered something that they had never come across in previous dives in the same area. In about 60 feet of water, just south of Pirates Cove, they saw a large rusty piece of iron mostly covered over with sand and sea life. Jon and the others brushed off the sand and uncovered the anchor relic from the past seen in this photo. It took a number of days to work out a plan on how to raise the anchor. Remember that back then there were no elaborate means other than submerging inflatable bags and extra tanks and hopefully floating the heavy item to the surface.
As it turns out, that is what worked for them, and after securing the bags and filling them with more than four tanks of air, the relic removed itself from the bottom where it had peacefully rested for decades. Marc watched with amazement as it came to the surface and wondered how it happened. The divers were exhausted from the recovery dive so guess who had to row the floating anchor, four divers and eight tanks and weights back to the camp shore? Yep, it was little Marc who promptly went to his bunk and slept when he hit shore.
Jon Hardy used the camp jeep and a winch to pull the anchor onto the shore and placed it by the camp flagpole where it stayed for years. Where the anchor is today is not known. In later years, Marc became a staff member at the camp.
Jon took this photo of Marc with the anchor a few days after its retrieval. Around Marc’s neck is a Horn Shark horn, which in those days was (wrongfully) collected by the divers at the camp. Flash forward to 2019 when Marc and his longtime friend and Avalon home owner, Dr. Mark Newman were talking with Jay Guion at the Joe’s Rental shop on the pier (in Avalon) and Marc showed Jay the photo and told him the story of the salvage. A very familiar smile and twinkle came to Jay’s face and he went to his file cabinet drawer, pulled out a photo of his dad’s 200 foot vessel from the early 1900s and said “Hey, look at the bow, what do you see?”, Marc quickly locked onto the large anchor of the ship which looked identical to Jon’s salvage. Jay went on to tell us how his dad lost an anchor somewhere in the same area. Well, who knows if it’s “the one,” but it sure makes the story more interesting that the legendary Jon Hardy may have salvaged a piece of the history of the celebrated Joe Guion.
Both the photo of “Jon’s Anchor” and the Horn Shark necklace have been given to the Dive Museum at The Casino which is a wonderful exhibit display on the history of Catalina diving and equipment run by the noted Jon Council.
