Barbara Allen
Woman Instructor Two, Photographer
Barbara Allen grew up in Los Angeles with active
outgoing parents who had her involved in camping,
fishing, swimming and body surfing. She lifeguarded for
LAPD Camp Valcrest and City of LA in the summers during
high school (Washington) and college (LACC).
She was lifeguarding, teaching swimming and performing
paddleboard ballet when her boss, Jack Cheany, asked if
she would like to teach skin and
scuba diving. Barbara
had never been scuba diving, just snorkeling local
beaches and Catalina. She said yes, and he taught her
the basics to pass the LA County underwater instructor's
course entrance test " this started a well loved and
traveled way of life.
Barbara graduated from LA County's 6UICC in the spring
of 1957, the second woman after Dottie Frazier. She then
got a part-time job with
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the Meistrell brothers at Dive N' Surf, helping Roger
Hess with their pool sessions and open water checkout
dives off the Rio Rita at Catalina.
Recertification seminars at Scripps Institution of
Oceanography in La Jolla introduced Barbara to southern
legends such as Connie Limbaugh, Jimmy Stewart, Wheeler
North, Andy Rechnitzer, Chuck Nicklin, Ron Church and
many others associated with Scripps, Scientific Diving
Consultants and the Diving Locker.
In May1960, Barbara and a roommate came to La Jolla for
the annual weekend recertification at Scripps. Big surf
canceled a canyon dive, so Ron and roommates Verne Fleet
and Sets Fukuno (all members of the Addicts freedive
spearfishing team) took them body surfing at Boomer
Beach, diving at the Coronados and introduced them to
some more special locals who've remained lifelong
friends. They still meet Wednesday nights and weekends
at the beach in La Jolla, hold an annual start of summer
beach party and end of summer campout. That weekend
turned into a week long of surfing and diving from La
Jolla to Pt. Loma where you had your pick of abalone and
lobster and the yellowtail and White Sea bass cruising
the kelp beds.
On the drive home to Los Angeles, they decided to send
out resumes to employment agencies in San Diego,
received positive responses, and in two months were
moving to Pacific Beach. After a couple months of
"settling in" they both got temp jobs in La Jolla, and
could jump in at Boomer or the Cove for a dive or surf.
Barbara eventually got a full time position at General
Atomic and started teaching Scuba part-time for the
Diving Locker and General Atomic's recreation club.
In 1961 she was "railroaded" into being secretary
(lasted 8 years) of the fledgling San Diego Underwater
Photographic Society and put together a monthly
newsletter for the Diving Locker. After a couple years,
Barbara started getting brave enough with the UPS club
camera (a Nikonos 1) to try underwater photography (not
too hard with the likes of Ron Church, Chuck Nicklin,
Bill DeCourt, Elwyn Gates, Emil Habecker and the early
SDUPS members giving generous encouragement) and even
won a couple club contests. San Diego's annual
underwater film festivals rivaled then filled the gap
after Santa Monica's demise.
One memorable trip was to Cabo San Lucas in 1964 with
Ron and Shirley Church and Lynn Chase when Cabo was
virgin and you buzzed town so someone would come pick
you up after landing on the hardpan behind the Hacienda
Hotel. Ron's friend from high school had a dive
operation there and they were treated to the best Cabo
had to offer (clear water with fish, turtles, sand falls
and black coral). Most impressive were the layers of
fish off the pier with cormorants diving amongst them
when the cannery was operating.
In the mid-60's Westinghouse decided to establish an
ocean research laboratory (WORL) in San Diego and
through Ron Church (who was pilot/photographer of their
new Cousteau designed minisub Deepstar 4000), Barbara
was recommended as a "technician." There were four PhD's
in various disciplines of oceanography, a
secretary/bookkeeper and Barbara, who was lucky enough
to work with Dr. William D. Clarke, a Scripps graduate
in biological oceanography. She was usually in the
office three days a week and underwater two.
In 1967, not too long after starting at WORL, Barbara
was asked to the Offshore Exploration Conference in Long
Beach to demonstrate Westinghouse's Mark VI semi-closed
circuit mixed-gas rebreather, along with June Davis,
another LA County UICC graduate. They did well,
attracted the crowds and were asked to demonstrate the
following year at the show in Washington D.C.
Westinghouse kept a 16' Boston Whaler at Scripps Pier
and Barbara assisted in surveys counting and
photographing plants and critters in kelp beds off Del
Mar, La Jolla and Pt. Loma, set and photographed
instrumentation off Del Mar and the Naval Electronics
Tower out from Mission Beach. She also participated in
an interesting abalone study off the Ithmus at Catalina
where they set up meter square transects then embedded
pinlights and attached numbered tags to the abs,
photographing them at night from a 16mm camera on a
tripod shooting B/W reversal film at a frame a second,
and next morning diving and plotting their locations.
Another fun effort was being sent to help survey and
photograph the effects of a warm water outfall on the
local flora and fauna off a power plant in Key West.
Barbara had many memorable vacations with Dottie Frazier
in the 60's at the Ithmus where Dottie lived aboard the
Fickle Miss. She recalls an impressive incident with
Dottie when they were heading to the Ithmus via Avalon
one weekend. Dottie's boat just stopped dead outside the
mooring buoys. Harbor Patrol comes right out to offer a
tow and Dottie says "Heck no, if I can't fix it I don't
belong here." She grabs her tool box, takes up a
floorboard, finds and fixes the problem and they're off
again! At the Ithmus they had a fun night dive with Ron
Church and Bob Bradley, co-pilots of Westinghouse's
Deepstar Submersibles where they (mostly Dottie) out
dove them for bugs.
In the early 70's Barbara moved to the San Francisco Bay
area and worked for FMC's oceanographic and waste
treatment divisions who utilized her diving and
photographic ability to document circulation studies
utilizing dye and ping-pong balls in a recirculating
test tank!
In the late 70's, Barbara took a 6-month leave of
absence from buying construction equipment at Bechtel,
San Francisco, to "backpack" through the South Pacific.
Thanks to her contacts in oceanography and underwater
photography, she was able to connect with associates and
acquaintances in diving, surfing and photography in
Hawaii, Papua New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji,
Samoa and Tahiti. In PNG she dove in Milne Bay with
early pioneer Bob Halstead, and thanks to intros from
Dr. Chesher (met when at WORL), got to meet and house
sit for the Director of Fisheries, then spend a week
with Dr. Chesher and wife Frederique aboard their
research vessel Moira while they were assessing coral
reef resources off the Trobriand Islands.
In the early 80's Barbara returned to Bechtel for a
two-year field buyer assignment in Pennsylvania. She
helped teach and document (photograph) a scuba class
from the Bechtel jobsite in a local pool, quarry and off
the Jersey Shore, then was treated to a wonderful week
of diving in Bon Aire.
In 1986, Barbara took off for a 6-month drive around
Australia which lasted over a year! After shipping over
camping, diving and photo gear, she bought a '76 Toyota
van, added a bull bar and mesh windshield cover then
took off from Bateau Bay, 60 miles north of Sydney where
her ex-roommate Mickey and wife Nan live. Heading north,
she adopted a traveling companion (Crickett, the cat),
made her way north around the top, down to Perth where
she decided to stay for the start of the America's Cup.
Barbara had to renew her 6-month visa, so she went from
Perth up through the middle of Western Australia to Port
Hedland and flew to Bali for a week then back down the
coast to Perth for a few weeks then around the bottom,
over to and around Tasmania and back up to Sydney,
getting in some local dives wherever she could.
Returning to San Diego in mid-1987, she took a part time
job with the City of Carlsbad issuing and monitoring
lagoon boating permits, and is now working in the
Engineering Department on their document management
system.
In April of 2009 Barbara was honored by the San Diego
Underwater Photo Society as one of their Pioneers when
they celebrated their 40th Annual Underwater Film
Festival.
(credit excerpts from Barbara's bio from Ron
Church's
website by Tani Church)
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