When Pierre Gruneberg was 19-years-old, he was on a hitchhiking quest to find temporary employment. The Parisian walked into the Grand-Hôtel du Cap-Ferrat, a Belle Époque confection overlooking the Mediterranean, according to Vanity Fair. The boy charmed his way into getting a job as a swim instructor at the hotel’s saltwater pool. Sixty-eight years later, Grunenberg is still following the same mission he was at 19: get even the most terrified people to jump into the water. He said he didn’t know he was going to make swimming or teaching career, but the now 86-year-old still swims half-mile each day and teaches skiing every winter. He has taught swim lessons to everyone from Brigitte Bardot to Paul McCartney’s kids to Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, and he keeps all of these records in a scrapbook. He’s “crazy about teaching adults who are frightened of the water.” He even got the head of Apple Music, Jimmy Iovine into the pool for the first time in 55 years. Iovine calls him a “magical man,” and now swims five times a week. Grunenberg has no plans to retire, saying the world makes him ill. “I will just die in the water, or in the mountains. But I won’t retire!” he told Vanity Fair.
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