Resurrection of the Deep Sea Diver

TRU DAT: Hard hat diving simultaneously fulfills our human desire for both solitude and connection.

May 28, 2024

[Jack Dabb adds one more to his thousands of logged helmet dives. While one of the most experienced recreational Standard Dress divers in the world, he is also one of the youngest.(Photo by Nate Leff @bsaleff) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

. . .

Hard hat divers made their mark on history. They contributed to magnificent feats of engineering like the Golden Gate Bridge, rescued trapped submariners, salvaged sunken ships, and recovered long-lost, treasure. But as collective memory of those and other achievements fade, a handful of hardcore aquanauts are determined to keep the skills and history alive. Maybe for no greater reason than the connection it creates with each other.

Exquisite Isolation

The piercing hiss of air inside the copper and brass bonnet of the Mark V dive helmet is so loud it’s like wearing a soup pot full of tire inflators. But to Jack Dabb it’s the lullaby of exquisite isolation. He adjusts the flow rate with a twist of the air control valve. He transitions from the boat’s ladder to the descent line which leads to a spot 130 feet, 40 meters, 21 fathoms beneath him. At that depth, diving’s acknowledged recreational limits, he will have the weight of five atmospheres on his shoulders. Seventy-three pounds of pressure per square inch. If he descends too fast, he can blow his eardrums. Unlike traditional scuba there’s no fins and no swimming in traditional hard hat diving. Dabb is diving a bubble of air which fills his canvas suit like a Macy Thanksgiving Day parade float. He vents it by pushing his cheek against an exhaust valve on the inside of the helmet. He’s carrying 150 + plus pounds of weight with the helmet, breast plate and lead bandolier crisscrossing his shoulders. Another 30-pounds for the ‘Frankenstein boots.’ If the rig malfunctions, if he loses his grip on the descent line he could sink to the bottom like a bag of bricks. The full force of New Jersey’s Round Valley Reservoir crushing in on him like a shop vice. But that’s not going to happen today. Topside, on the other end of his air hose umbilical is Vince Scarponi. A man who has never let him down. Someone he’s known since he was a toddler. Called him GooGoo before he learned to speak. Now they hardly need words at all, especially when diving.

Hand over hand, one leg wrapped around the line, knife cinched to his weight belt, Dabb descends like a modern-day Captain Nemo. Several times he has trouble clearing his ears. Needs to ascend the line a few feet to clear before going back down.

“I’m listening to his breathing, I can hear every breath,” said Scarponi. “I’ll know if he’s in trouble before he does. I say, ‘you okay Jack? He answers back, ‘I’m okay.”

Dabb thinks he’ll get a little narc’d at the bottom, drunk off nitrogen, but that’s all. This is logged hard hat dive 2,215 for him. He’s not exaggerating when he says he’s spent his life in this gear. Can hang upside down from a ladder in it. Has more bottom time than many professional commercial divers. All made more impressive by the fact that on this day, he’s only 15-years-old. He can’t even drive a car yet.

Even in the unusually clear waters of the reservoir, darkness envelopes him. He continues on, trusting in his own experience, trusting in the man above who is receding with the distance and the light. Finally, his feet touch bottom. He lets go of the line, surveys the gloom surrounding him. He takes a few careful steps, riding his air control valve depressing the cheek exhaust valve to maintain a perfect equilibrium in his helmet and suit.

Enough to breathe, enough to withstand the pressure of the surrounding water without crumpling. Not so much that he begins an uncontrolled ascent like a balloon to the surface.

It is a rare place he has arrived, especially for someone with so few summers behind him, so many ahead. But there’s little time to savor it. This is a ‘bounce dive,’ meaning he needs to ascend almost immediately. A longer dive would require underwater decompression to rid his body tissues of saturated nitrogen gas. While inert under pressure when a diver comes up too fast, nitrogen can bubble out painfully, sometimes fatally in a condition known casually as the bends, clinically as decompression sickness.

Back on the deck of Scarponi’s pontoon boat, The Classic Diver, the older man quickly unscrews the wingnut sealing the helmet’s faceplate and swings open the hinge to let in fresh air. Dabb’s smile emerges from within its metal-grated shadows. He descended a boy, has ascended a man, believes this hobby, this unusual, and dangerous sport likely saved his life.

He’s older now and has had many dives since that day, but he’s still one of the youngest and most experienced recreational hard hat divers alive. He knows he’s poised to play a big role in preserving, maybe even rescuing, its rich history in a world with the attention span of a TikTok video.

“My generation has grown up playing video games,” he said. “I’ve taken friends out with me to dive, but they get bored quickly by how complicated it is,” he shrugs. “But for me I can’t have anything in the way of my goal.”

[Greg Davis and son Nathan prepare a Mark V Helmet before a dive. (Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

Precise and Impatient

It’s a sunny, October day and the celebrated ‘gin clear waters’ of Vortex Springs, an inland dive resort in Ponce de Leon, Florida, are being muddied by the weighted footprints of helmet divers led by an ex-airplane mechanic named Greg Davis.

“It’s like old airplanes I want to see them fly,” said Davis, 75, co-founder of Classic Diving, Ltd., a company dedicated to ensuring diving’s old ways, known variously as hard hat, copper hat and standard dress diving, don’t disappear. “Your kids and my kids need to see this work.”

Davis is precise and impatient. What you might expect from someone who spent 52 years fixing some of the world’s most complicated machines, an expert in Navy F14’s, Air Force F15’s and the Marine Corp Harrier Jump Jets, where every turn of a screw (or forgetting to turn one) can mean the difference between life and death. He wears his passions not on a ballcap or embroidered jacket like other old-timers, but in his actions—shouting into the comms box or adjusting an exhaust valve on a Mark V about ready to go back into the water. He's been a diver since 1966 an instructor since 1982.

“Aviation and the diving business are the same physics,” Davis explained. “Just opposite of each other.” Which is why he loves them both. Lives for them, still.

While a diagnosis of congestive heart failure has kept him out of the water for the last two years it hasn’t slowed his pace on the surface as promoter and ringleader of recreational hard hat diving. For Davis, the catalyst for going down this storied path of diving history began accidentally with a $20 dollar raffle ticket purchased at the 2011 DEMA (Diving Equipment Manufacturer’s Association) trade show. Davis won an iconic Mark V dive helmet. The gold standard of hard hat diving and, depending on make and year, worth anywhere from $10,000-$20,000. Rather than putting the helmet on a trophy shelf, Davis decided he wanted to dive it. Then built a business around it. It’s now been used by his company Classic Diving, Ltd. in over 500 dives.

[Student Todd Orr: “You almost feel like you’re walking on the moon down there.” (Photo by Kevin Sites)Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

Walking on the Moon

Retired law enforcement officer Todd Orr, 56, was committed enough to his bucket list to pony up $1,200 for Classic Diving’s multi-day course and about three-hours of bottom time in helmet and suit.

“I always wanted to be commercial diver,” said Orr. “But things got in the way. I wanted to say I’ve done this.”

Once he’s suited up he makes a slow motion, almost ethereal walk along the rocky bottom of the springs trailing the umbilical braid of blue, red and yellow hoses behind him. Each of the colors mean something; yellow for air, red for communications as well as line strength and blue for the pneumofathometer, which measures depth. Orr uses the back of a sunken sailboat to assemble the nuts, bolts and fittings of a metal pipe sculpture. It’s an exercise Classic Diving calls the ‘Heavy Metal Experience,’ and replicates a mechanical aptitude test given to U.S. Navy Divers. It was showcased in a scene from the 2000 film Men of Honor, in which Cuba Gooding, Jr. portrayed the barrier breaking life of the Navy’s first black diver, Carl Brashear. In the film however, the pipe’s many parts were simply scattered off the dock onto a muddy bottom in an illustration of the discrimination Brashear had faced. Orr was given his puzzle pieces in a bag. The task still sufficiently challenging as novice divers must manage their suit buoyancy while peering out the steamy helmet port to manually thread all the tiny nuts and washers in the right place and in the right order.

“You almost feel like you’re walking on the moon down there,” said Orr, jubilant, after resurfacing and his faceplate immediately reopened by the tenders. The first step in the diver’s undressing.

“Okay, put the helmet on your knee,” said Greg Davis, moving forward with his phone in camera mode. “Time to take the hero shot.” It’s the same seen in old black and whites of salvage divers from years past, the same that will grace Orr’s own connection to that past on his Recreational Standard Dress Diver cert card.

Gear Intensive

To say helmet diving is gear intensive is ridiculous understatement. Like suggesting a few training runs might be beneficial before attempting a marathon. It can take as long as 20-30 minutes for a diver assisted by two tenders just to get into the full standard dress set up. It requires literally bolting a breastplate onto the rubber neck gaskets of the heavy canvas diving suit before threading on the helmet bonnet, making communications and air safety checks, then looking for leaks at the water’s edge. Each step critical not just to the success of the dive, but to the survival of the diver. Those diving safety standards have evolved with the increased understanding of pressure science and technological innovations.

Suit Implosion, Gory Results

Chief among them in the hard hat diving world was the invention of the non-return valve in the mid 1800’s. This valve was designed to keep pressure constant in the helmet in the event of the air hose being severed. In that unfortunate situation the sudden venting of air from the helmet and suit could, depending on depth, lead to a suit implosion in which the diver’s blood and body fluids are forced into the helmet following the escaping air through the same channel in which it had been pumped inside. The hit television program, MythBusters tested this concept using a pig carcass with predictably gory results. You can still watch it on YouTube.

(Watch the video, Mythbusters-Compressed Diver here)

While safer today, helmet diving is hardly free of risk. The day before Orr’s dive at Vortex Springs an experienced, but older diver of 72 suffered a heart attack attempting to ascend the ladder, laden with gear, after a dive. Fortunately, two of Classic Diving’s participants are Milwaukee Firefighter-EMTs. Trevor Pinkalla and Nate Leff saw the warning signs, managed the diver’s symptoms, and coordinated his rapid transport to a nearby hospital. He survived. But his hard hat diving days are likely over. The incident also highlights one of the hobby’s significant obstacles: many of its recreational practitioners are aging out, long dominated by middle aged men with past connections to it either as former military or commercial divers, not willing to let go of the past until its pried away from their wrinkled fingers.

[Unknown diver.(Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

Hard Hat History

While primitive diving bells for underwater salvage and repair have been in use since the early 1500’s, historians credit brothers Charles and John Deane for the birth of hard hat diving. In 1820 England, John, a former sailor, showed remarkable creative savvy in saving dozens of horses from a stable fire by donning a helmet from a medieval suit of armor, sliding a fire hose underneath, and having it pumped with air instead of water. He and Charles later adapted their patented “smoke helmet” for underwater use. The deadly drawback, however, a tilt of the helmet would flood it with water, potentially drowning the diver.

A decade later, the Deanes worked with German-born engineer Augustus Siebe to produce an underwater helmet attached to a canvas diving suit. Siebe’s modifications led to a safer rig with better mobility and is considered the forebearer of today’s standard dress.

[An underwater ROV (remotely operated vehicle) captures video of a hard hat diver. (Photo by Anita Sites)Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

The Mark V

Fast forward to 1912 a U.S. Navy Gunner’s Mate named George Stillson griped that the Navy’s protocols and equipment were insufficient for making deep dives safely. Instead of punishing him, his bosses told him to fix the problem. Stillson’s answer was as series of deep diving tests off Long Island sound whose finale was record-shattering dive to 274 feet on air. His 1915 report contained a design for what would eventually become The Mark V helmet. The Mark V was so groundbreaking it went into immediate production and became the Navy’s underwater workhorse for nearly 70 years (1916-1984) eventually replaced by ‘superlight,’ fiberglass helmets. Four different manufacturers supplied the Navy with the Mark V during its years of service, Miller-Dunn, A. Schrader’s Son, Inc., Morse and DESCO (Diving Equipment and Supply Company.) Only DESCO and Shrader’s are still in the diving business. Repairing old helmets for use today and, by special order, making new ones for standard dress diving enthusiasts.

Universal Symbol

With its three glass ports and a hinged faceplate, the Mark V is so ingrained in popular imagination it has become almost a universal symbol of humankind’s descent into the sea. Yet it wasn’t made for exploration, but as a robust tool of the gritty, underwater salvage and construction world. One in which the divers were equally hard and salty as their deep-sea bonnets. Because of the long hours working underwater some used their helmets as underwater lunchboxes, stashing sandwiches, or snacks inside. The positive air pressure allowing them to bend over, open the faceplate and eat. A rascally few even found ways to drink on the job. In his book Thirty Fathoms Deep by former U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and author Edward Ellsberg, a diver on a treasure salvage operation repeatedly descends sober but returns drunk. His explanation? He’d found “the good stuff,” casks of very old, but-well preserved wine at the bottom of a wreck.

[USN Master Chief and Master Diver John Hopkins, Jr. swings from his umbilical off the bow of a sunken sailboat.(Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

Master Chief, Master Diver

If Greg Davis is the ringleader in Classic Diving’s standard dress revival than his partner John “Hoppy” Hopkins, Jr., 54, is its most public face (if faces could be seen under all that copper, brass and glass). Still an active duty Navy Master Chief and Master Diver with more than 30 years-service, Hopkins was featured in a live video diving the sunken battleship memorial the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii last December. In the video made by the National Park Service, Hopkins was wearing a Mark V helmet and standard diving dress gear identical to those used by Navy divers who conducted the massive salvage and recovery operations following the Japanese surprise attack there in December 1941 – some 84 years earlier. The memorial still contains the remains of as many as 900 men considered ‘buried at sea.’

(Watch the video 2023 USS Arizona Live Dive here)

“It was humbling to go down and walk the decks in the same type of equipment where the salvage divers that came before me had worked so hard to move mountains of steel and to return fallen Sailors and Marines to their loved ones,” said Hopkins, who is stationed in Pearl Harbor and has dived the Arizona 15 times, but only twice wearing the Mark V. “Knowing that there are Sailors and Marines still on eternal watch aboard the vessel just gets me every time.”

Submarine Rescue

In addition to salvage and recovery operations like Pearl Harbor, hard hat Navy divers also proved themselves essential to lifesavings tasks like submarine rescue. In 1939 the diesel sub, USS Squalus flooded and sank in 240 feet of water off the coast of New Hampshire during test dives. While 26 died in the incident, 33 crew members were extricated using a modified diving bell-type chamber designed by the Navy’s Diving and Salvage school and deployed by Navy divers.

Golden Gate Bridge

Six years earlier, in the middle of San Francisco Bay, commercial hard hat divers were contributing to one of the world’s most challenging and magnificent feats of engineering. The Golden Gate Bridge. Divers fought from being swept away by violent currents while positioning steel beams, panels and blasting tubes to guide black powder bombs into the bedrock for excavation. While breathtakingly dangerous work, there was no shortage of men willing to take it on. A steady, high paying job during the Great Depression was considered a kind of miracle in-itself, no matter the risk. And it’s this intrepid history that today’s recreational standard dress divers seek to promote and preserve.

The Treasure Trove

While Master Chief John Hopkins, Jr. had previous experience diving the Mark V, he became intricately entwined with hard hat diving history through a random phone call when he was with Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, DC in 2016. Then an aging, retired Navy Master Diver Dennis Morse, maybe out of loneliness or maybe with a plan, was reaching out to make contact with younger colleagues. Over regular phone calls they became fast friends, Morse spinning yarns of his past navy adventures aboard the submarine rescue ship, The USS Kittiwake.

When Hopkins finally had the opportunity to visit Morse at his home in North Carolina the older man gave him something that would alter the course of his life: a veritable treasure trove of U.S. Navy hard hat diving history including, original, out-of-print manuals, a cutting torch, fins, dive masks, a non-magnetic dive knife and a rare Schrader’s Son Mark V helmet, serial number 1424. Hopkins was overwhelmed.

“Denny that’s a $2000 knife and $10,000 hat,” said Hopkins at the time, in disbelief at the generous gifts. But Morse persisted. ‘You been talking about this for years.’ He told Hopkins, ‘but you have to call me before you dive it.’ When I finally left his house I had a grin from ear to ear.” Hopkins said.

[USN Master Chief and Master Diver John Hopkins, Jr. on the stern of a sunken sailboat.(Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

‘Button it up’

Hopkins had the manuals scanned and they’ve since become part of the Naval Sea Systems Command diving history archives. But more dramatically, Morse was able to hear as Hopkins dove his old helmet. As promised, Hopkins called him on the telephone just prior to going into the water at a DESCO hard hat rally in Milwaukee in 2018.

“Denny it’s awfully loud in here, ” Hopkins said, recalling the moment. “That’s the sound of air going through your hat. And then I said, ‘Button it up.’ And before the faceplate was closed, even with all that noise, I could still hear Denny on the other end laughing his ass off.”

Morse died a few years later, but not before achieving perhaps what he wanted al all along, to pass the torch of diving’s old tools and knowledge to a new generation.

Exactly what Davis and Hopkins hope to continue doing as a business with Classic Diving, Ltd. While other groups and dive shops offer hard hat diving experiences, Sharky’s Underwater Expeditions in Key Largo, Florida and Olympus Diving in North Carolina to name a few, the pool of customers is limited.

Davis says Classic has certified nearly 50 people as recreational standard dress divers. The typical demographic being middle-aged men, usually with some connection to scuba, navy or commercial diving. They include guys like Robert Brenner, an opera-loving Marine and Navy veteran, and Fernando “Chico” Lopez, a pharmaceutical consultant and ex-Navy Diver, who, after taking the course themselves, now travel to Vortex Springs in Florida sometimes twice a year to help out as tenders and safety divers. Classic Diving offers less expensive ‘try dives’ for $200 in an effort to lure a more diverse crowd to the sport.

[‘America’s Singing Cowgirl’ Jessie Lynn gets suited up for one of the three-hours she’ll spend underwater for her certification as a Recreational Standard Dress Diver.(Photo by Nate Leff @bsaleff) Taken at Vortex Springs,Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

America’s Singing Cowgirl

One of those is 28-year-old Jessie Lynn, a country singer/songwriter from Prattville, Alabama. Crowned Miss Rodeo USA in 2022, Lynn can trace her native Cherokee heritage back before the Trail of Tears, took her first horse ride at three-months old, entered her first pageant and started singing at age three, was barrel racing in rodeos by four, at 12 rode a bull and won an $800 jackpot. In a single year, she put in 100,000 miles as Miss Rodeo USA, mostly driving ‘Mabel’ (named for a character in Tyler Perry movies) her decked-out Ford 350 dually emblazoned with sponsor logos, lights and the marquee, ‘America’s singing cowgirl.’ As much as Main Street Electrical Parade as vehicle.

Lynn’s been singing and riding so long other memories don’t have a chance. So graceful while being atop half-ton animals most of her life, she’s never even broken a bone.

She’s entertained at hundreds of state fairs, carnivals, rodeos and wherever else Americans gathered in homage to family, farm animals, fried foods, demolition derbies and the end of covid. But all those shows, all that performing, all that pressure of wearing the crown, finding a quiet place for herself became more than a challenge. It felt impossible. Then Jessie Lynn found scuba.

“I have a healthy respect for water, not to be taken lightly,” she said. “I was a little nervous first time I ever dived. Once I got over that and discovered the whole other world under. It (scuba) gave me that quiet. That sensory deprivation.”

It was while working on scuba diving certifications at Vortex Springs that Lynn met Davis and Hopkins conducting their recreational standard dress diver course. They encouraged her to do a try-dive. She liked it enough to take the full course last October, approaching it with the same intensity that put her on top of the rodeo world, but also seeing it as a necessary antidote.

“Water is my happy place even more so than riding,” Lynn said. “Because you can’t predict what a horse is going to do.”

But performing is something she’s never able to escape completely. During one of her training days at Vortex Springs, Greg Davis prompted her into a patriotic photo op, asking her to carry then unfurl an American flag on the bow of Vortex’s sunken sailboat – all while clad in a Mark V and full standard dress gear. It’s something she’s done ringside, on horseback, and under the brim of her black cowboy hat more times than she can count. But she sticks it just the same, a pro in any medium, all smiles 20 feet below the surface.

[As Miss Rodeo USA 2022 Jessie Lynn carried the flag ringside more times than she can count. But underwater in nearly 200-pounds of gear was a first.(Photo by Nate Leff @bsaleff) Taken at Vortex Springs,Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

[When a helmet diver surfaces, tenders immediately open the faceplate. Jack Dabb breathes in fresh air post dive.(Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon,Florida 10-23]

‘Over my dead body—or yours’

If it wasn’t for a school crossing guard, Jack Dabb’s childhood might’ve turned out very different. His parents were separated, his mom basically raising three kids on her own--even though her husband still occupied a part of their Pittstown, New Jersey home. He was rarely around, paid little attention to his children, but also wouldn’t move out, according to Sandra Dabb-Kleiman.

“He wouldn’t leave the house,” she said. “It was one of those, ‘over my dead body – or yours,’ type of things.”

But Sandra needed a babysitter one night while she attended a PTA meeting. Shirley Scarponi already had the bona fides, was great with kids, safely shepherded them back and forth across the roadway at the local elementary school twice a day. When she took Jack into her home that night, he never wanted to leave. It was there he saw her husband Vincent’s Mark V helmet on the mantel.

“I couldn’t stop looking at it. Words can’t describe what I was feeling,” said Dabb at Classic Diving’s event at Vortex Springs last October. “I just knew this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

[Watch the video,Diving the Mark V Helmet by Kevin Sites here.]

Vincent Scarponi is a successful mortician. But his own father had been a Navy construction engineer, a Seabee and diver during World War II. Served at all the Pacific theater hot spots, Guadalcanal, and Okinawa. It was there he was almost killed when a Japanese kamikaze plane exploded above him, showering him red, hot engine oil. Like most boys, Scarponi and his brother wanted all the details. Like most veterans his father didn’t want to talk about it. They dribbled out in rare bits and pieces while they watched old movies together, the places or events stirring the old man’s memories. Yet years later, Scarponi was still inspired. In 2000 he ordered a brand-new Mark V helmet from DESCO (Diving Equipment Supply Company) one of the helmet’s four original manufacturers, similar to what his father once wore. He wasn’t even sure he was going to dive it, maybe just keep it on display. That changed quickly after it arrived.

“After that I needed an air supply, and then I needed a suit and then I needed coms,” Scarponi said. “I read all the manuals and started diving in people’s pools or along the shorelines. Then I needed a boat,” he laughs.

Self-taught, but so good at it he joined the Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit. He began diving for bodies in the tri-state area, sometimes as far south as D.C. Bringing closure to grieving families was something he was well-practiced at doing. Turns out, he was pretty good at nurturing troubled ones as well.

“Vince or Mr. Vinny as my kids called him is just a great big, teddy bear of man,” said Sandra Dabb-Kleiman. “After my kids’ first time at the Scarponis, we all began to spend a lot of time together. Vince would take us out in his boat on the reservoir. And Jack, just one or two years old, he would just jump right off the bow into the water, fearless. And Vince would scoop him out with his big paws, put him back on the boat.”

While the Scarponis had a daughter, Tara, Jack Dabb became the son they never had. ‘Mr. Vinny’ now had someone to share his passion for helmet diving. He saw Dabb’s obsession with his Mark V. Let him spin the wing nuts, disassemble, and reassemble its brass rails, even let him frolic in the backyard pool wearing the helmet that cost nearly as much as a year’s tuition at a state college.

[Four year old Jack Dabb with‘surrogate dad’and diving buddy Vince Scarponi on the cover of the book Scarponi wrote of their adventures together above and below the surface.(Courtesy Vince Scarponi)]

To Scarponi this was something to celebrate. He wrote and self-published a book called, Jack And The Helmet Diver. Illustrated it with photographs of four-year-old Jack on his boat helping him dive. Made sure every library in the county had several copies. An example that a little love and encouragement can light the fuse of boundless imagination.

When Dabb was older and no longer needed a babysitter, he still went to the Scarponi’s, sometimes seven-days a week. He says his mom, Sandra, was the real hero, though, she saw Vince’s value as a male-role model. Would drop everything to take him there when he wanted to go.

“There was nothing but love in that household,” said Dabb. “Vince taught me everything, had every talk that a father is supposed to have with a son. Everything about being a good man. I look back now and think I really had the best childhood ever.”

While Dabb reveled in his time with Scarponi, life at his own house could turn dark when his own father showed up. He says his father was pretty drunk one night, tried to hit his mother and when Dabb, just a high school freshman, intervened, his father turned on him.

“He hit me, started strangling me. I think he was trying to kill me,” said Dabb. “He was a broken man and there was no fixing him.”

“He was in the midst of choking him,” Sandra Dabb-Kleiman corroborating the version of events that night. The entire last six years of the marriage became very violent and abusive.”

The police took him away and she divorced him a year later and remarried in 2022.

Diving became Jack Dabb’s safe place. Scarponi began taking the him on regular hard hat diving trips. They dived so much, sometimes 10-12 dives in a single weekend, their gear never had a chance to dry out. They set goals together and conquered them, like going deep when Jack was only 15.

“He saw I loved it. He encouraged me, pushed me. We bonded over it,” said Dabb.

Dabb soon he had hundreds and then thousands of logged dives under Scarponi’s tutelage, but with the full support and encouragement of his mother.

“It’s his religion, his food, the air that be breathes, it’s his everything,” said Sandra Dabb-Kleiman. “I’ve never seen anyone who loved water so much.”

Dabb says his time with Scarponi and diving probably saved his life.

“I would’ve been a very different person if I hadn’t met Vince,” said Dabb. “Without Vince’s, love. I’ve had a friend commit suicide and I’ve known six people that have died from fentanyl,” said Dabb. “Vince has actually buried some of them. It could’ve been me.”

But in 2020 the man so familiar with death came face to face with his own mortality.

Vincent Scarponi was diagnosed with a rare form of lymphoma. But just as Vince was there for Jack when he needed him most, Jack proved equally loyal.

“Things were pretty ugly,” said Scarponi. “After I came back from (chemo) treatment my legs would be swollen, like elephantitis. They would be oozing with fluid and the bandages had to be changed all the time. It was a mess. But Jack stayed right there with me.”

[Twenty-year-old Jack Dabb with Vince Scarponi at a recent Bottom Walkers dive rally. While Vince isn’t ready to dive himself yet, he’s still at the other end of the line for Jack.(Photo Courtesy The Bottom Walkers)Taken at Willow Springs Park, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 5-24]

Scarponi has encouraged Dabb to keep diving without him for now, still using his gear including the same Mark V he first saw on the mantel as a toddler. In the meantime, Dabb, now 20, waits to hear whether he’s made it through the selection process to become a U.S. Navy Diver. Something he and Scarponi agreed would be the right career path for him. But Dabb says he’d defer that dream just for one more chance to be out on the water with Scarponi again.

“I wait for the day I can dive with Vince again,” Dabb said. “That means everything to me. I’d even hold off going into the Navy for that.”

[Trevor Pinkalla:“When there is pain,the picture may not be clear yet.”(Photo by Nate Leff @bsaleff) Taken at Vortex Springs,Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

No Cakewalk

Life has been no cakewalk for Milwaukee Firefighter/EMT Trevor “Pinky” Pinkalla. His son, Brian, was diagnosed with kidney cancer at age two. After his son’s surgery Pinkalla stayed by his side for six month, never left the hospital. All of this pressure took its toll after Brian was discharged. Pinkalla began to experience severe depression. An excess of darkness from constantly being on call for others but never himself. Especially since he had his own health problems. He battles severe psoriatic arthritis which requires an intravenous infusion of chemo every two months to keep it at bay. The stress finally took its toll.

“I was always super tired, super exhausted and sometimes so depressed, couldn’t get out of bed,” said Pinkalla.

His therapist asked him what he enjoyed in life. Scuba diving was at the top of the list. He was already a member of the Milwaukee Fire Department’s Dive Team and began to throw himself into the sport even deeper.

“Up until that time I had been focusing on everything but me,” said Pinkalla. “When I would go in the water I could focus on myself. The bubbles of the water calmed me. Anytime I felt stressed I got into water.”

He came across helmet diving randomly. He’d been at a triathlon with the Fire Department’s Dive Team on Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, the same time DESCO was conducting their hard hat dive rally in 2018. Asked to try it. He found in standard dress diving the same kind of history, detail and mind-focusing complexity that had helped get him through another earlier rough patch in his life.

“I was bullied when I was in grade school, said Pinkalla. “The way I dealt with it was to immerse myself in the study of Ancient Egypt, the pyramids and Pharaohs. I even learned to read and write hieroglyphics.”

Pinkalla, now 42, commemorates it in tattoo inkwork on the canvas of his body. Pyramid designs sharing space with tall-masted sailing ships, a future diving helmet and other touchstones of his journey. He’s already gone through eight inking sessions with another eight or 10 to go.

“When there is pain, the picture may not be clear yet,” he said of the ordeal. “But as it builds and gets finished the final product will be amazing just like the experiences we go through.”

On this October day, he is with his hard hat tribe in Vortex Springs, Florida. He and colleague Nate Leff have already saved the life of a diver who suffered a heart attack. Now he’s working with Robert Brenner as a tender, helping dress one of the new students.

[Opera-loving,ex-Marine Robert Brenner is a Classic Diving regular whose commitment to the sport is more than skin deep.(Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

Pinkalla and Brenner know once the students have had their chance, they’ll get their own bottom time, diving any one of the ten different helmets brought by the group. Pinkalla has already become a Recreational Standard Dress Diver instructor, eager to share his twin passions of history and diving with others. His son Brian is doing well; recently turned 16, working towards Eagle Scout – and just signed up for scuba lessons. But Pinkalla retains his vigilance. He gave up drinking any alcohol to ready himself as a future donor if his son’s remaining kidney begins to fail. Life is still hard for him, but he pushes past the pain, as he’s always done, sees the good in front of him—and on the horizon. The picture, like the one on his body, becoming clearer all the time.

[Jack Dabb, Trevor Pinkalla and Robert Brenner prepare the author for his second dive.(Photo by Anita Sites)Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

The Future of Diving’s Past

While he waits to hear from the Navy, Jack Dabb works as a commercial diver in Maryland, using a hydraulic chain saw in zero visibility underwater to clear hazardous wood pilings from a boat marina. It’s cold and dangerous work -- and he loves it. But his commitment to hard hat diving goes beyond his own professional goals and personal achievements. A few years back he created a group called The Bottom Walkers. It has nearly 2500 followers on Facebook, most decades older. But he remains hopeful in attracting others like himself, that rare, younger person who looks beneath the water’s edge and sees sanctuary.

“I’ve known Jack since he was two-feet tall,” said Rob Love of New Hampshire, who’s been a commercial diver for 30 years. “He’s grown up around divers and that’s all he wants to do. (But) hard hat diving for a hobby is difficult because you need a few people who are at least a little interested to make it work. It’s not something you can do alone.”

Nor does Dabb want to, wants more than anything to dive once again with the man who has always been there for him, always holding steady at the other end of line, whether navigating through the vicissitudes of childhood or to the bottom of a deep reservoir.

And, at last, there’s some good news. After once being on his cancer deathbed an experimental treatment called CAR-T Cell Therapy has pulled him Vincent Scarponi back from the brink. Doctors tell him he’s cancer free. For now.

“Listen, I know I’m already on borrowed time, but I’m still here,” said Scarponi. “I used to be strong as a bull, but now I get tired out so quickly. So as far as diving again, we’ll see.”

And for Dabb a world with Vince Scarponi still in it, diving or not, is better than one without.

[Trevor Pinkalla unscrews the wingnut sealing the faceplate of the Mark V helmet for Jack Dabb after a dive.(Photo by Kevin Sites) Taken at Vortex Springs, Ponce De Leon, Florida 10-23]

Transformative Magic

Like Scarponi and Dabb many of those drawn to the revival of diving’s old ways have been summoned, seemingly, by its most representative symbol; the helmet. For Greg Davis it was won in a raffle. For John Hopkins, Jr. it was gifted to him by a beloved, older colleague. For Vince Scarponi it was the stories of his father wearing it in war. For Jack Dabb it was glimpsed on the living room mantle in at his babysitter’s house. All mutually connected to its transformative magic.

“I feel at peace even when shit goes wrong,” said Dabb. “You’re in 200-pound Mark V set up. So deal with it. “It’s a big stroke of confidence for me. It’s a different world.”

And despite all its components, maybe a less complicated one too. Hard hat diving simultaneously fulfilling our human desires for both solitude and connection. Divers inhabit these elaborate metal vehicles of isolation while remaining tethered to the world and to each other. Entering the water alone, but guided by voices from above. Life-giving air supplied like mother to child by an umbilical, connecting one individual to another, to history, to life. And for maybe for now, that is enough. More than enough. Deeper than any one person can go,alone.

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