Working Underwater: The Story of the Commercial Diving Industry

Again the U.S. Navy played a large role in assisting the commercial industry movement into these activities. We hired some notable Navy
personnel and there were dozens more who assisted other member companies as well. Bud Mills contributed a lot in making commercial diving
safer. He had been a medical corpsman, had lots of paperwork experience, excellent accident investigation skills—he’d been there, done that.
Bob Merriman, is the divers’ diver who deserves this award more than I do, and I hope that he receives it in the near future.
Some of the Navy personnel, although highly trained and very professional in performing their duties, we thought would better serve
us by moving them into different positions based on their personalities, such as diving sales skills. Who best could explain in technical
terms to our clients how diving in the GOM had changed? Therefore, we moved Frank Mantell and Bobby Vendetto…into diving sales.
Those two fellows brought us more sales at times than we could handle.
Then, one day along came the “Flying Eyeball,” Dru Michel. Dru was with Taylor Diving & Salvage and introduced it into the offshore
industry. Some others thought that it was a good idea, like Jack Smith at S&H Diving. Others thought that it would cause them to lose
diving days, but eventually Dru and others assisted in convincing me to purchasing some RCV 225s and later obtaining some RCV 150s.
But where would I obtain the support personnel to operate and maintain those vehicles?
I inquired around with our Navy divers about the Navy’s activities with ROVs. I was informed that yes the Navy did have and use them
but it was mainly black box type operations. Again the U.S. Navy to the rescue.
When I asked for names of personnel I could contact for possible hiring I was told that they knew of a fellow only by his nickname.
After weeks of searching. I finally located the person whose nickname was Duke. I set up an interview with him in California. At the
meeting he gave me his resume, but a lot of good it did because it was marked classified on most of the answers.
When I asked Duke what he did in the Navy he said it was classified. After much discussion I finally hired him, Duke Miller. Duke
headed up our ROV’s worldwide. I was going to call him by his real name but no one here would know whom I was talking about.
ROVs assisted in making commercial diving safer and less expensive along with moving diving into deeper depths faster than anyone expected.
Earlier I mention there were two aspects that really changed the commercial diving industry safety record, and gave it the respect it
deserved. The second item was this:
Well, now go back in time again into the late ’60s. The ADC board members performed all the activities for the association, gave lectures,
speeches, presentations, etc to promote the organization. But when a board member performed one of these tasks, his company usually
benefited by obtaining the contract and or that job.
This didn’t set well with all the board members even though they all had equal opportunity in performing those functions. The ADC
started a search for someone to manage its operations.
One day, Ken Wallace, who was with TD&S, which was part of Brown & Root, went to the Association of Building Contractors, a
building contractors’ association that represented thousands of statewide companies, meeting in New Orleans. There he was impressed
with their spokesperson and brought him to the next board meeting.
At that meeting we hired our first executive director, Jeff Hingle. Jeff was with us for 3 to 5 years. He now is, and has been for the past
twenty-plus years, the sheriff of Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.
Now the ADC’s executive director could lead the association under the direction of the board of directors. He would act as a third-party, nonbiased
person in representing the ADC. The board was very happy. Of course other notable executive directors such as: Bob McArtle, Ross Saxton,
and Phil Newsum followed over the past 46 years in maintaining the high standards that were established in the early years of the association.
With and through the entrepreneurial leadership of the board of directors, today the ADC is clearly the only nationally recognized
association that speaks for the commercial diving industry.
- Tom Angel
ADCI Commercial Diving Hall of Fame
a meeting to organize a non-profit industry
association that would be based in Louisiana.
Most of the contractors had their own inhouse
safety standards, but that had begun to
present problems.
“Some of our customers were even starting
to use our differences in policy as a
negotiating tool,” Hughes said. ‘Company A
will do such and such (basically cut some
corner on safety)—why won’t you?’ As little
contact as we had with each other, we could
not easily learn whether this was true or not.”
The contractors agreed to form the
Association of Diving Contractors and
Hughes was elected its first president with
Tom Angel as secretary-treasurer.
About the same time the ADC got up and
running, the commercial diving industry
THE HISTORY OF THE ADCI
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