May 24, 2019
Hello ,
After reading Jennifer Egan's Manhattan Beach last year, (a book recommended by one of you loyal subscribers), I've been curious about the first women deep-sea divers.
The book follows the lives of a father, his daughter and a gangster in New York during World War II. The daughter, Anna, becomes the first woman to work as a deep-sea diver at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's historical fiction, giving the author license to roam beyond the truth.
Which she did. There were no women divers at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
So, I set out to find the first U.S. Navy female diver.
That proved much more difficult than I expected. And not simply because I know next to nothing about diving.
Searching
for the first U.S. Navy Woman Diver
I started as all serious researchers do. I googled first female navy diver.
Up popped the name of Mary Bonnin and pictures of her wearing those behemoth weighted diving suits I learned all about reading Jennifer Egan's book. Mary was sited as the first enlisted female diver certified in both air and gas diving in 1977.
This seemed all good and well, but shortly after reading Manhattan Beach, I had run across an article about the Navy naming a sub base dive locker* after its first woman diver, named Donna Tobias.
(*The facility used by divers who perform underwater maintenance on attack submarines, in case you're wondering.)
Both women are shown in pictures wearing the Mark V, the old diving suit used in World War II and up through the Vietnam War. I searched for the dates of these women's first diving accomplishment. I would compare the dates and solve this mystery.
Twenty-one year old Donna Tobias trained at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Norfolk, V.A., in a course so difficult half the men dropped out.Va. She graduated in 1975. Clearly before Mary Bonnin was certified in 1977.
That's when I discovered I was comparing apples and oranges. Donna was the first female Deep Sea (hard hat) Diver.
She worked on search and salvage operations and underwater repairs of surface ships and submarines.
Mary Bonnin was the first woman U.S. Navy Master Diver, which is the highest warfare qualification given to an enlisted person. She went on to be the first woman to qualify as a Diver First Class, and to train more than 1,000 navy divers.
Now I understood how the two women could both be first.
Things got more confusing when I read about Kati Garner, known as the first woman to graduate from the United States Navy Diving School, which she did in 1973, two years before Donna Tobias passed her exams. A little more research and I had apples, oranges and plums.
Kati had joined the WAVES, and was training "to sit behind a desk and typewrite all day," when, on impulse, she volunteered to have a go diving school, and
became, I discovered, the first female Navy SCUBA diver.
Black Tuesday. That's what they called the first Tuesday of training at the Navy Diving School.
Kati and one other woman lined up for this traditionally all-male endeavor that would last four weeks. Kati may have been the smallest on deck at 5'3" and weighing 115 pounds.
"They give you a pretty rough hour of calisthenics," Kati recalled. "They got us out there and made us run after every exercise, they wore us out, and then they had us play leapfrog with about 23 guys. They were standing around with their legs straight, their rear ends sticking up, and boy, were they hard to get over!"
Later in the day came the qualifying swim. The dive students had to swim the length of an Olympic size pool underwater, taking only three breaths.
Men started to quit. Not Kati Garner. The other woman dropped out during the third week pool sessions regarded as the toughest part of the course. Kati finished the four weeks becoming the first enlisted female navy SCUBA diver.
But that was not the end of my discoveries. Next I learned of Lieutenant Commander Linda Hubbell, who in 1976 became the first female officer to qualify as a SCUBA diver.
Deep in this research about women brave enough to do something no woman had done before, I discovered Andrea Motley Crabtree, who became the first woman U.S. Army deep sea diver in 1982.
Andrea also has the distinction of being the first African American female army diver. She's shown in the photo wearing the iconic Mark V diving suit made of rubberized canvas, with a cylindrical copper helmet and breastplate and one-size-fits-all lead boots. The suit weighs 200 pounds, which was necessary at the time to allow divers to withstand the pressure at depths of more than 100 feet.
When Jennifer Egan went looking to dig up what it was like being a pioneering female diver, she consulted Andrea Motley Crabtree.
Jennifer told NPR "She [Andrea] was extremely helpful to me in understanding the difficulty of being a female diver. I mean, diving is a very physical undertaking, and so she was very articulate about the challenges of doing that as a woman, and especially the prejudice that she encountered. Men did not want her there and they made that very clear."
Several of the other "first" women divers also talk about encountering sexist prejudiced. Mary Bonnin worked at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard where a dive school slot opened because a male sailor turned it down. When Mary expressed an interest, a Chief Warrant Officer said, “You couldn’t do it. Babe, what do you want to be a diver for? You’ll be thrown out of that school in a week.”
These challenges made women determined to succeed. Donna's diving career spanned 25-years, during which she rarely spoke about her work. "People didn't get it, it was hard to describe. It was immensely important to me....always beating in my chest."
A movies released in 2000, Men of Honor put the public spotlight on the topic of pioneering Navy divers. Inspired by the true story of the first African American man to become a master diver in the U.A. Navy, Carl Brashear, the film stared Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Robert De Niro.
Now, more people were curious about women divers breaking barriers and Donna began to speak more about her accomplishment and how difficult it had been.
She talked about the men would stare at her trying to stand up in the Mark V suit that weight 70 pounds more than she did. Once she stood up, she had to walk. On the ground and on the ocean floor.
"I'm 5-foot-5 on a tall day, and my feet are small. Those boots were tough. They weighed 17 pounds each, and my foot only filled half the shoe. I even had dreams about those shoes," Donna Tobais said. The weight of the boots made it esepcially difficult climbing up the rungs of a ladder out of the water. "My foot would just hang down, trying to lift those boots. You had to get your momentum
going. Once you started, you could not stop."
In 2001, The New York Times reported as Donna Tobais and two other divers were honored by the Women Divers Hall of Fame.
Photo: Donna Tobias, (left) Kathy Weydig (center) and Betsy Royal, (right) Captain’s Cove Seaport, Bridgeport, Conn. Donna is shown in navy diving gear to the right.
Donna Tobias accomplished another "first" in a 125-foot-high metal cylinder filled with water more than 100 feet deep. The giant water tower was the place sailors were taught how to escape from a submarine. Donna was the first woman to teach this vital skill.
With these brave women breaking barriers, woman racked up many more diving firsts, in the military and in civilian life, in the U.S. and around the world. Two-hundred-twenty three have been inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame.
Sources:
The day after I sent you my article about the National Parks last week, what should come across my twitter feed but news of a beautiful new picture book.
Publisher Simon & Schuster says, "In simple, soaring language and breathtaking art, acclaimed author-illustrator Evan Turk has created a stirring ode to nature and nation. From the rugged coast of Maine to the fiery volcanoes of Hawaii, You Are Home reminds us that every animal, plant, and person helps make this land a brilliant, beautiful sanctuary of life."
"Human details are included, of the sort often left out of male-centric military history books: the volume documents, for example, the struggle of the African-American female soldiers to find hair products appropriate for African-American hair in Europe. This unique perspective on a dark period in American History makes this volume a fascinating and insightful read."
Also, I recently discovered the book has been stocked by 273 libraries across the country and hopefully building momentum!
In Elberton, G.A.10th grade Beta Club are gearing up for national competition next month. You may remember they won their state contest by recreating a scene from my book Pure Grit.
Students use costumes and props, construct scenery and essentially become "wax museum figures" of the people or characters portrayed in the scene. Schools out for the summer, but the kids got together for a planning meeting Thursday afternoon. And they were kind enough to send me a photo of themselves taking a break from their meeting.
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