My dad, the Chief, was a hard-hat diver for most of his Navy career.  He was rated as a shipfitter (which became a metalsmith which became a hull technician).  He was not a formally educated man but he was very intelligent about things to do with metallurgy, gases, atmospheres, depth and pressures and all kinds of things.  I know because every couple of years he had to take a test for promotion and I used to quiz him from his manuals;  they had sample tests at the back of each chapter.  I was always amazed at how much he could remember. 

He was a great swimmer.  When I was little I used to love to watch him swim, he was so natural and confident in the water.  He could hold his breath longer than anyone I ever knew...we used to have contests in the family and he never lost...even when mom would tickle him. 

I was about seven years old.  We were living on Chela Street on a piece of sandy land called Willoughby Spit near Norfolk, Virginia.  It seemed to me that we were at land's end.  There was water on three sides of us;  Oceanview Blvd turned around and went back to Norfolk right behind our house.  Now there is a bridge/tunnel from Willoughby Spit to Hampton...the bridge leaves the ground just about where our back yard was.  I have written about all this before;  it is where we rode out Hurricane Hazel in 1954. 

That summer was a rough time for the Chief;  he was stationed on the USS Preserver (ARS 8), a repair and service ship out of Norfolk. (You probably saw the Preserver steaming up and down the Florida Coast in 1986 as she worked to recover the Space Shuttle Challenger). There had been a plane crash just off the spit and the Chief had to dive on the wreck to recover the bodies and bring the wreckage to the surface.  Even with all the things he went through in WWII, the recovery of those bodies was one of the worst experiences of his life.  He said they found the crew still strapped into their seats and they looked like they were still flying the plane.  He always felt that they should have been able to get out and swim to the surface.

Maybe that's why he decided that it was time for me to learn to swim, or maybe it was just a coincidence;  in any case, one warm Saturday afternoon we walked out to the north side of the spit, out onto the sandy beach where there was a long jetty made of heavy timbers.  We walked about halfway out on the jetty;  he slipped into the water on the lee side, where the water  was calm.  I was starting to get nervous;  I figured I knew what was about to happen.  To his credit, the Chief was always patient with me, even when I was an unbelievable wuss.  He talked me into the water, let me put my arms around his neck,  and then swam away from the jetty.  We just drifted for awhile, and then he started talking me through what I had to do to swim on my own.  It wasn't a sink-or-swim kind of a deal (although it seemed like it to me at the time);  he took it a step at a time.

I was so fixed on him and trying to do what he wanted without unwrapping my arms from his neck or my legs from his waist, that I never noticed how far from shore we had drifted.  It took a while but eventually I started getting the hang of it.  I was scared to death, but I trusted the Chief.  When he felt we had made enough progress, he said, "Okay, lets swim back to the beach".  That was when I realized how far off the beach we were...it seemed like forever away.  But he swam next to me and encouraged me all the way.  I remember how elated I was when I felt the sand under my feet.  I stood up to walk the rest of the way in and nearly fell over.  My legs seemed to be made of rubber.  But I had done it, I had done it, I swam all that way on my own.

That initial lesson was followed up with what seemed like hours of lectures about water safety and rules.  And more practice and more lessons and more scenarios to learn.  After a while we moved the lessons to the windward side and I learned how to swim in the surf, how to dive through an incoming wave to get beyond the break point, how to deal with undertow, how to float while you rest, and how to deal with just about every possible thing a person would encounter in the ocean.  And we continued to hold our breath.  Only now we would take a deep breath and go underwater so there would be no cheating.  He taught me how to hyper-ventilate before diving to get the maximum Oxygen saturation before going under. 

We went out farther and started diving down deeper.  I learned how to hold my nose and blow to equalize the pressure in my ears and how to release bubbles and go to the surface at the same rate.  We swam together several times a week.  Every time we went into the water, I  would be taught something new or would be tested on what I had already learned. 

I have been grateful all my life for the things my dad taught me.  He was always a patient teacher;  I know I was a disappointment to him at times;  he was a jock in high school and I wasn't.  He spent time teaching me to throw a ball better, swing a bat, charge the boards, grab a rebound.  The only thing I was really good at was swimming...and it was an advantage to me all my life, I always felt confident in the water.  He taught me about being a leader, a patriot, and gave me a wonderful model for being a father.  I think that those times in the ocean in Virginia are some of my favorite memories of my dad.