pioneers
In a League of Their Own Three commercial divers stand out in Women Divers Hall of Fame THERE’S A GROUP OF WOMEN divers who share an achievement that’s so rare that it could be compared to the most exclusive clubs in the world of sports, such as baseball players with 600 career home runs and running backs with 2,000 rushing yards in a season. Norma Hanson, Dolores E. Fisher and Tamara Brown are the only three commercial divers to be inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame, an organization based in New York City that is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2010. The Hall of Fame has published a booklet honoring its 176 inductees from all over the world, women who have made a mark in virtually every category of diving. The Hall of Fame recognizes women in many areas, such as underwater filmmaking and photography, wreck diving, cave diving, scuba-industry leaders, military divers, research scientists, instructors, marine scientists and conservationists and underwater archaeologists. Even underwater hockey players get their due. But in the world of commercial diving, Hanson, Fisher and Brown stand alone.
Norma Hanson Hanson began hard-hat diving in 1949, according to the Women Divers Hall of Fame, working in both the commercial abalone and underwater construction industries. By 1957, she’d made more than 4,000 dives in heavy gear and was the second woman to join Hard hat diver Norma Hanson. California’s Piledrivers, Bridge and Dockworkers Union Local 2375. Hanson set the women’s world depth record for diving on air at 220 feet in the 1950s and performed for the glass-bottom-boat shows at Santa Catalina Island in California. One of the most intriguing stories Hanson often told involved a surprise visitor at one of those shows. As the divers got into position, Hanson’s husband, Alfred, saw a great white shark and warned the line tender on the boat. He in turn relayed the message down the line to Norma. 14
UnderWater
JULY/AUGUST 2010
“I look down and here’s this great white shark coming up with its mouth wide open, row after row after row of teeth,” she was quoted as saying by the Women Divers Hall of Fame. “I was just in position where I could kick it in the nose. I gave it a hard kick, and it veered off. Of course, my line tender pulled me right up. I was so frightened, I couldn’t stand up. I had super-deluxe rubber legs.” About half an hour later, Norma was back in the water for another show. She realized later that she should have suspected trouble when she noticed the absence of the hundreds of little fish that showed up daily to be fed. “The funny part was, some of the people on the glass-bottom boat saw the whole thing, and they thought we had a trained shark,” she said. “We heard they wanted to take the trip again so they could take pictures of it.” In her 50 years as a commercial diver, she served as foreman and tender on pile-wrapping and harbor-maintenance jobs, did harbor inspections and traveled the world training commercial divers, the Hall of Fame said. She and her husband wrote “More Than Nine Lives,” chronicling their lives as commercial divers on the West Coast. They also worked as divers and consultants for Walt Disney Studios, where they worked on movies such as “20000 Leagues Under the Sea.” They retired from the industry as chief divers for the Port of Los Angeles in 1988. Leslie Leaney, the founder of the Santa Maria, Calif.-based Historical Diving Society USA, counted the late Norma Hanson among his personal friends. “Norma Hanson was a bona-fide, card-carrying union member with many more hours underwater than a lot of the men,” Leaney said. “She operated post World War II out of Southern California and garnered lots of press because of her unusual status and employment. I knew her in her later years. She was not the macho, hardnosed woman I expected. She had an elegance and a softness that was disarming. She was like a favorite aunt, but wearing clothes with diving-helmet motifs on them.” (Women’s Equipment Test Team)
