...and another great story.  Thanks, Mike.  I passed this one on to my
daughter Danna.

Best regards,
Russ


Mike Wallace wrote:
>
> Shamelessly stolen from another list.. :-)
>
> ------- Forwarded message follows -------
> Send reply to:          PublicSafetyDiving <[log in to unmask]>
> From:                   [log in to unmask]
> Date sent:              Thu, 12 Apr 2001 00:21:11 EDT
> Subject:                Navy's First Female Diver Took the Plunge
> To:                     [log in to unmask],
>         [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]
>
> PublicSafetyDiving
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> http://www.latimes.com/living/20010411/t000030947.html
>
> Navy's First Female Diver Took the Plunge
>
> By FRANCES GRANDY TAYLOR, Hartford Courant
>
>     Donna Tobias' recent induction into the Women Divers Hall of Fame
> released a torrent of memories of her experiences in the Navy--few more vivid
> than her time in the Mark V.
>     The Mark V, no longer used by the Navy, was a diving suit made of
> rubberized canvas, with a spun copper helmet and breastplate and
> one-size-fits-all lead boots. It was a behemoth of a suit. On land, it
> weighed 200 pounds to Tobias' 135, but in the water it allowed her to
> withstand the pressure at depths of more than 100 feet.
>     "On a daily basis, it was the single biggest obstacle," said Tobias, a
> petite woman with a quiet voice and calm demeanor. "That suit was huge on me.
> 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."
>     It was an arduous climb up a ladder out of the water, trying to place her
> lead-weight boots on each rung: "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."
>     Her nemesis on land became her best friend in the sea. "It was cumbersome
> on land, but in the water, you could move around; it was less of a problem.
> In the water, I felt safe in it. I can smell being in this suit--smell the
> air, the metal, taste it, you know? I got to be fond of it, in the water."
>      That suit would challenge any diver, man or woman. But in the Navy, no
> woman had ever won the right to wear it--not until Tobias in 1975 became the
> Navy's first female deep-sea diver.
>      From her first scuba dive, Tobias wanted to spend her life on the water.
> That passion would ultimately lead her to challenge one of the most elite
> bastions in the military. "It's only been in the last few years that I've
> really begun to talk about it," said Tobias, who lives in Waterford, Conn.,
> and teaches at New London High School. "I didn't want people making fanfare
> over me, because we were all going through it. It was an accomplishment for
> women. It was a door opening."
>      Tobias, 48, grew up in Southern California and joined the Navy because
> of her love of the water. "Even when I was talking to my recruiter, I asked
> about going to diving school. He said no way, women couldn't get in there,"
> Tobias recalls. After basic training, "I pressed to find out what a person
> had to do to become a diver, and they came up with a long list of things. . .
> . I just went through each thing one by one." She ignored naysayers who
> believed women didn't belong in diving school. She applied to the Navy 2nd
> Class Diving School and heard nothing until she received notice that she had
> been accepted, two days before the program started in January 1975. Tobias
> was 21.
>      During the grueling 10-week course at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base
> in Norfolk, Va., where half of the class typically drops out, Tobias learned
> all phases of deep-sea diving: search and rescue, "hard hat" diving and
> salvage, as well as studying physics and medicine.
>
> * * *
>      Diving school was a mental as well as a physical test, compounded by the
> men's resistance to a woman in their midst. "Some couldn't get over their own
> wonderment over how I could wear the metal breastplate, if it was an issue
> for my breasts," she said. "There were some that were so threatened--what
> would it say about them if a girl could do this?"
>      Looking back, Tobias said, "I have some perspective on it now, and I
> feel it was a learning experience for all of us. The highest compliment is
> for someone to say, 'I'll go in the water with you.' And some of those who
> resisted me the most at first, we became the closest in trust. I watched
> myself grow, and what was powerful over time was watching people become their
> best self."
>      She graduated with a class of 14 in March 1975. "When you go through
> something like that together, you get pretty close to people," she said.
> After graduation, Tobias was assigned to the Naval Submarine Base in Groton,
> Conn., where she taught sailors how to escape from a submarine in a giant
> water tower known as the escape training tank. The 125-foot-high metal
> cylinder was filled with water more than 100 feet deep.
>      Steven Lechner, a retired Navy master diver, worked with Tobias at
> Groton. He met her in 1977. "She had to prove herself, to be twice as good at
> everything, and she was. She's remarkable; she has a tremendous amount of
> courage."
>      Lechner said Tobias was the first woman to teach in the escape tank.
> "After she proved herself, everyone looked up to her and admired her, because
> they knew she was the only woman in the whole Navy at the time doing that."
>      As a Navy diver, Tobias worked in ports on naval vessels, took part in
> search and salvage operations in the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean
> and participated in the sinking of a World War II ship to construct an
> artificial reef in Chesapeake Bay.
>      At Groton, she worked in the hyperbaric chamber, which treats divers
> suffering embolisms, as well as people with carbon monoxide poisoning and
> gangrene. "We saved people's lives, which was immensely satisfying," Tobias
> said.