An exhibit that opened Saturday at Nauticus takes us fathoms deep into the world of Navy diving, and deeper still into a life of dogged courage and determination.It’s the story of Carl Brashear, a man who overcame poverty, racism and what should have been a career-ending injury to rise to the elite rank of master diver and whose career was celebrated in a hit movie, “Men of Honor.”
“Dream to Dive: the Life of Master Diver Carl Brashear” takes visitors through the improbable arc of Brashear’s life, from his upbringing as the son of sharecroppers in rural Kentucky to his Navy career and the challenges he faced throughout his life. It includes a daily showing of the movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Robert De Niro.
It’s quite a story,
Brashear quit school after the seventh grade and worked at add jobs, including gas station attendant. In 1948, the year President Harry Truman ordered the military services integrated, he joined the Navy. Two years later, after seeing a Navy diver in full dive gear about to salvage a downed fighter jet, he found his improbable dream and was accepted to dive school.
Overcoming constant harassment by classmates and even death threats, all the while getting his high school equivalency diploma, he became a diver. It’s one of the most demanding careers in the military, calling on almost super-human strength and endurance. He rose to the rank of first class diver, but then, in 1966, his career seemed to come to a sudden end.
Do you remember the incident in January 1966 when, during refueling operations off the coast of Spain, a nuclear bomb accidentally fell into the Mediterranean? Brashear was on board the salvage ship Hoist when the bomb was found and nearly lost his life as it was being recovered.
While the bomb was being lifted from the sea floor, the tow line broke loose, whipping back over the deck with a portion of pipe rail still attached. Brashear was able to get several sailors out of harms way before the rope and pipe struck him in the lower left leg and nearly severed it at the knee.
He almost died of blood loss but hung on through long hospital ordeals. While at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, he suffered from persistent infection and gangrene. Faced with a long recovery, possibly three years, he stunned doctors by insisting that his leg be amputated so he could get on with the nearly impossible journey back to diving.
"I can't stay here three years,” one of the panels in the exhibit quotes him as saying.” I can't be tied up that long. I've got to get back to diving.' They just laughed, 'The fool's crazy! He doesn't stand the chance of a snowball in hell of staying in the Navy. And a diver? No way! Impossible!'"
But there was a way, through hard work and retraining.
“Sometimes I would come back from a run and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump,” he told an interviewer in 1989. “I wouldn’t go to sick bay, they would have written me up….I’d go somewhere and hide and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it – and old remedy. Then I’d get up the next morning and run.”
The exhibit, the first full-scale retelling of his life, includes rarely seen photos of him undergoing rehabilitation, running with his new leg, doing pushups and deep knee bends. He fought his way back, becoming not only the first full-time diver amputee but the first African American to rise to the rank of master diver.
Brashear lived in Portsmouth while in service and in Virginia Beach after retirement. He died in July 2006.
Several members of his family were expected for the opening yesterday. One of his sons, Phillip Brashear, a retired Army helicopter pilot and president of the Carl Brashear Foundation, says he learned a life-long lesson from his father. “Being true to yourself and realizing that whatever you put your mind to you can achieve. “
As Brashear once put it, “I ain’t going to let nobody steal my dream.”
Photo: Brashear preparing to dive during the 1960s. Courtesy of Nauticus.
He almost died of blood loss but hung on through long hospital ordeals. While at Portsmouth Naval Hospital, he suffered from persistent infection and gangrene. Faced with a long recovery, possibly three years, he stunned doctors by insisting that his leg be amputated so he could get on with the nearly impossible journey back to diving.
"I can't stay here three years,” one of the panels in the exhibit quotes him as saying.” I can't be tied up that long. I've got to get back to diving.' They just laughed, 'The fool's crazy! He doesn't stand the chance of a snowball in hell of staying in the Navy. And a diver? No way! Impossible!'"
But there was a way, through hard work and retraining.
“Sometimes I would come back from a run and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump,” he told an interviewer in 1989. “I wouldn’t go to sick bay, they would have written me up….I’d go somewhere and hide and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it – and old remedy. Then I’d get up the next morning and run.”
The exhibit, the first full-scale retelling of his life, includes rarely seen photos of him undergoing rehabilitation, running with his new leg, doing pushups and deep knee bends. He fought his way back, becoming not only the first full-time diver amputee but the first African American to rise to the rank of master diver.
Brashear lived in Portsmouth while in service and in Virginia Beach after retirement. He died in July 2006.
Several members of his family were expected for the opening yesterday. One of his sons, Phillip Brashear, a retired Army helicopter pilot and president of the Carl Brashear Foundation, says he learned a life-long lesson from his father. “Being true to yourself and realizing that whatever you put your mind to you can achieve. “
As Brashear once put it, “I ain’t going to let nobody steal my dream.”
Photo: Brashear preparing to dive during the 1960s. Courtesy of Nauticus.
