Shipyard Legacies: The Divers family

SHIPYARDlegacies: Story and photos by Anna Taylor • Public Affairs Specialist

the Divers family They say you can’t outrun your past, but in the case of Claud R. Divers III and his son, Will, apparently you can’t outrun your family traditions, either.

The two Divers men ended up at Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY), even though they say they never planned to make their careers here.

It all started in the early 1920s when Ross “Bobby” Askins, the elder Divers’ great uncle, worked as a welder on the USS Langley (CV 1) conversion. The family still has a piece of welding slag and the hand-written note Bobby brought home to commemorate his work on the project.

“I don’t know how long he stayed at the yard, but I suspect he stayed until the late 1940s when he retired,” said Divers. “His sister was my grandmother, so he wasn’t technically a Divers.”

Another great uncle, Henry Divers, completed his apprenticeship at Southern Railroad and then served in the Navy as an aviation machinist mate during World War I. When the war was over, he bought some instruments, including a marimba and drum set the family still has to this day, and performed in New York City’s vaudeville circuit for several years. As the popularity of vaudeville waned, he 20 • SERVICE TO THE FLEET • APRIL 2017

began producing sound effects for silent films in Norfolk. When “talkies” gained popularity in the late 1920s and forced Henry out of the silent film industry, he took a job at the shipyard, where he worked as an inside machinist for the Mechanical Group (Code 930) Machine Shop (Shop 31). Before retiring as a shop planner in the 1960s, Henry was the director of the Shop 31 orchestra and vaudeville troop that performed in the shipyard and across Hampton Roads during World War II. “All these machinists happened to have a lot of entertainment experience, so they put together the orchestra and did a lot of bond rallies and things like that,” said Divers.

Claud R. Divers Jr., the elder Divers’ father, was also a Shop 31 inside machinist. He came onboard in 1940 as a class of 1944 apprentice and graduated a year early in 1943 thanks to the extra hours he worked during the war effort. He served with the Merchant Marines for three years during World War II before returning to NNSY in 1946. Divers Jr. retired in 1971 as a lead engineering technician in the Engineering and Planning Department.

Nearly catching us up to present day, Claud Divers III began

Will inherited his grandfathers apprentice class ring from 1944.

his career as an inside machinist apprentice too, but after a short stint teaching Industrial Arts and Mechanical Drawing in Franklin, Virginia.

“I taught for a couple of years at Franklin High School, and then they began opening these vocational schools, but in the state of Virginia, in order to teach at a vocational school, you needed vocational endorsement and one year of journeyman level experience,” said Divers. “My teaching certificate was an academic certificate, so I applied for the apprenticeship.”

The shipyard job was meant to be short term while he got the requisite training for the vocational school, but after graduating the apprentice program and finding a position in the shop’s training branch, he realized he could still teach without switching careers for a third time. Not to mention he was making more money as a second year apprentice than he had as a teacher.

He eventually transferred to what was then the shipyard’s Industrial Relations Office, and after 19 years at NNSY, found a position at the Office of Civilian Human Resources, where he retired in 2014 as the training director.

The most recent member of the Divers family to find his place at

NNSY is Will, a nuclear electronics mechanic foreman in the Electronics Shop (Shop 67) and another apprentice school graduate.

Will said he has always been a tinkerer with a penchant for electronics. He took vocational courses in electronics before graduating high school and finished at the top of his vocational class.

“I started really getting into electronics, and the theory, and designing circuit boards and building motors from scratch. We were designing robotics and practicing programming,” he said. “I wanted to be an electronics technician. I was trying to find jobs, and I started working at a hardware store, and then I got a job as an electrician for a small company at the oceanfront doing residential and commercial work.”

He earned his Electronics Engineering Technology degree from Tidewater Community College, but resisted the idea of working at NNSY until he realized the training and benefits were hard to beat.

“I decided to go ahead and put in for the shipyard after my Dad suggested it, and he gave me some pointers, but as much as I like my dad, I didn’t want to use him to get into the shipyard.”

In that vein, Will decided to follow his own path and opted not to wear the machinist hat his father and grandfather wore before him.

“I'm sure that my family doesn't have the longest line of family members working at NNSY but my family has worked at NNSY for almost 100 years,” said Claud Divers. “I take a certain amount of pride in having multiple generations. I like the shipyard, I like the work the shipyard does, and I hope the shipyard is here forever. The history is so neat and it’s great to be a part of that.”

To Will, the family legacy drives him to do better.

“I feel like I have to live up to my family and keep doing the best I can,” he said. “Being able to walk through these buildings and knowing that even if I’m just passing through, thinking my dad and my grandfather and great-great-uncle all worked here. Not a lot of people have that kind of connection to a place. It’s not like my father and I were trying to keep the family legacy going, it just kind of happened, and in a way it’s created a new legacy. We’re a family of tradition.”

APRIL 2017 • SERVICE TO THE FLEET • 21