Lynn Murphy Mark 01/21/2022
I was once asked when I have ever done anything differently than what was expected of me.
The first thing that comes to mind is when Richard and I took 10 weeks off of our regular lives sometime in the 1970’s and traveled to Jacksonville, Florida, to study SCUBA instruction. We had fallen in love with diving, had progressed through the various levels leading up to instructor-ship, and felt a strong pull to become certified and able to teach others this wonderful sport.
I remember sitting in Dorothy Crahan’s office at Deaconess. She was the associate Director of Nursing and I needed her permission to take a leave of absence. When I explained my request she was quiet for a minute. Then she asked, “Why in the world do you want to do that?”. She had never been scuba diving so I couldn’t relate to her on that level. All I could come up with was, “It’s the chance of a lifetime!”. She looked at me like I had two heads, then she shook her head and signed the LOA paperwork. She reminded me that my job might not be waiting for me when I got back. I acknowledged that reality and thanked her for approving my LOA request.
Family members and friends had mixed reactions to our plan. Parents were worried about our employment. Friends mostly saw this as a crazy but grand undertaking. We were absolutely giddy at this opportunity to take time off from regular life and maybe change the trajectory of our lives.
We packed the Mustang with ten weeks’ worth of stuff. I looked out the window and called Richard to come see what was going on in the apartment parking lot. Our dog, cleverly named Reddog, had positioned himself behind the rear tire of the car as if to say, “You are going to take me with you or I’ll die trying!”. We had every intention of taking him and had gotten permission from the school to bring him along. He soon became a favorite among the other students.
Our time in Florida was one diving adventure after another, and a lot of classroom work to go along with them. We dove in springs and caves and lakes and the ocean, taking on harder lessons each time. We learned how to care for and disassemble equipment for cleaning and maintenance. We learned the physics of PSI (Pounds per Square Inch) and how many atmospheres accumulate the deeper the dive. We dove in water that was completely obscured and used our compasses to find the object placed at a distance by our instructors. We learned buddy breathing with a panicked diver. We learned how to teach the basics to wanna-be divers.
In the evenings we would get together and drink rum and cokes and play board games if we weren’t too exhausted from our day. The camaraderie was great because we all shared the love of venturing far under water, breathing smoothly and gliding along, often accompanied by colorful creatures. Each of us had taken a hiatus from our regular lives and shared the delight and excitement of this new venture.
I was the only woman in the class. In fact, we were the only married couple taking the class together. Some of the other guys were married, but had left their wives at home. We got a room to ourselves while the rest of the students were in kind of a barracks-like setting. No one seemed to mind that we got our own room. After a while I was just one of the guys.
I remember going to lunches at a sub sandwich shop. They were the best subs – packed with goodies and soaked in vinegar and oil. It was a counter restaurant and we bellied up to the bar as often as possible. Other times we would shop at the grocery store and communally cook for each other. I remember there was a lot of laughter and cursing among our group. I was one of the worst.
When it came time for our final exams we had to do a dive under difficult circumstances, we had to teach a basic lesson, and we had to take a written exam and a hands-on exam with equipment. When graduation day came we waited to see who had gotten the highest grade. I am not ashamed to say that it was me. The guys were mostly good natured about it except for one snide comment about getting it because I was a woman. I took that in stride. It was not worth a response.
We were sad that our time had come to an end. Some of the students were applying for instructor jobs We were torn because we both had good jobs that we enjoyed. We did look through the scuba magazines for help wanted ads. There was one for two instructors at a resort on Grand Cayman. Since we had been there to dive a couple of times we were really tempted. But the interview was to be on Grand Cayman and we did not have the funds to go after not working for 10 weeks. We gave up on the idea and started for home in Saint Louis to resume our traditional lives. This was the first of several spontaneous adventure ideas!