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Bill McBride
Early Ohio Instructor and Dive Evangelist
Born in Defiance, OH in 1933, I took SCUBA lessons in
Toledo at the YMCA from Instructor Don Lee. I enrolled
with my boss and a fellow salesman. This was in 1959,
about 16 years after Cousteau had “invented” the
Aqua-Lung. My boss and I, upon completion of our basic
course, ordered “wet suit kits”, which were comprised of
a roll of foam neoprene, (unlined), a pattern, two cans
of glue, and five zippers. Thus, we made our own “custom
fit” suits. We also made our own lead weights, using a
large soup ladle as a mold.
I chose a double-hose regulator, and used various types
of these until lung surgery ended my diving in 2005. I
found that the double hose worked especially nice for
close-up U/W photography. And I also liked the balance
of it, and the fact that the exhaust didn’t stream past
my ear.
The Ohio Council Of Skin and SCUBA Divers had formed a
few years before, and I enrolled in one of that
organization’s earliest Instructor Certification
courses, again at Toledo. Later I also earned YMCA
Instructor Certification, then NAUI, (my NAUI Instructor
number is A-16), then once
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I got into the SCUBA business
I was also certified by PADI, (#1386) By 1964, along
with teaching classes I also became involved with
Certification Courses for Instructor rating, both for
the YMCA, the Ohio Council, and NAUI. In this capacity I
helped to teach and certify dozens of new Instructors,
who went on to certify thousands of sport divers. I
always took particular pride in helping to standardize
the tests and skill requirements that had been previously
lacking in some of the agencies practices. During this |
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period we were successful at weeding out most of the
“wildcat” SCUBA courses that had been being offered the public, many
with woefully inadequate standards.
During this early period I attended a NAUI convention in
L.A., where I made a presentation on the benefits of
making “field trip certification dives” a part of all
agencies training courses. Until then, only NAUI was
requiring this, and their “check out dives” were
conducted military style, befitting advanced SEAL
training. I also argued for the modification of their
approach to better fit with recreational divers. In the
audience for my presentation was Jacques Cousteau, who
afterward congratulated me for addressing a “very
controversial topic”.
By 1968, at first with a partner whom I soon bought out,
the start of Sub-Aquatics was born. This dive store
operation grew to incorporate 4 stores in 3 cities, and
eventually to a customized training pool with a 20ft.
deep silo connected to the large pool with an underwater
“tunnel”. We trained and equipped thousands of sport
divers, many teams of underwater recovery units, and
dozens of Instructors. For search and recovery work we
developed and taught several innovative search methods,
utilizing nearby rivers, ponds, and lakes, mostly with
extremely limited visibility conditions.
Sub-Aquatics was also instrumental in the formation and
support of several dive clubs, and contributed in many
ways to the growth of the Ohio Skin And SCUBA Council.
We also promoted and escorted many trips to some of the
more exotic diving areas in the world, and in some cases
helped to encourage the establishment of dedicated
diving operations at some of those sites.
During these years I became knowledgeable in the field
of producing high pressure compressed breathing air by
attending compressor factory training sessions. I
established, in conjunction with our diving business, a
new branch called Breathing Air Systems. With the
benefit of “being at the right place at the right time”,
(and doing business in a customer-oriented manner), this
branch became the largest distributor of this type of
equipment in the U.S. Fire departments use this same
type of equipment to refill the “smoke packs” worn by
firefighters, and this market soon far outgrew the sales
of compressor systems we were making to fellow dive
stores. This division has, by now, made over 3000 system
installations, some in every State in the country and
many overseas.
Another diversification we made was to build a nearby
banquet facility. Named the Grand Host East, this
up-scale hall could seat 700 for private events and
regularly drew over 1000 for public holiday buffets.
We also, at one point, experimented with leasing the
Portage Quarry from the Stone company that owned it, and
operating it as a dive facility. This was prior to the
present management, and failed to work that well for us,
mostly because of the distance from our shops, and our
failure to find a competent manager for it.
In 2007 my wife Alice and I sold out our majority
holding in our company and retired. Surviving a number
of cancer and spine surgeries in recent years, my
activities are mildly limited, but we still enjoy
travel, spending a couple of weeks each year in Maui,
and usually a couple more two week trips to the
southwest, Alaska, etc.
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