Dottie Frazier, a rare woman in the male-dominated world of free diving and scuba diving on the West Coast in the 1940s and ’50s who was often described as the first woman to be certified to teach scuba diving in the United States, died on Feb. 8 at her home in Long Beach, Calif. She was 99.
Cyril May, her husband, announced her death.
Ms. Frazier spent most of her adventurous childhood in the water, taking her first dives in Southern California as a young girl. She had almost as many diving stories to her credit as she did dives.
One of her most memorable encounters was with a shark off the coast of Mexico. The time a large seal wanted to eat the fish she was bringing back with her and slammed into them, breaking four ribs. She broke her leg on snow skiing, and made herself a special wetsuit with an ankle-to chest zipper so that she could be rolled into the suit and continue diving with her busted limb.
Even motherhood didn’t stop her from spending long hours in the water.
“One friend of mine had a flag she would wave when she needed me to come back to shore to breastfeed my youngest son,” she said in an interview for Tim Ecott’s book “Neutral Buoyancy: Adventures in a Liquid World” (2001).
Ms. Frazier was already a qualified free diver and skin diver when her first dive in scuba diving was offered in the United States in the 1950s. Initially, she wasn’t impressed with the gear.
“I thought it was for sissies,” she said in the “Neutral Buoyancy” interview. “For people who couldn’t hold their breath long enough to catch their dinner.”
She was a fan of the new technique and tried to enroll in an underwater instructor certification course in Los Angeles County in 1955. She was sent a letter saying the course was for men only, but when she told that news to a friend and respected fellow diver, Jim Christiansen, he asked, “Did they return your check?”
“When I told him no, they had not, he said, ‘Just be ready; I’m picking you up,’” she told the podcast “The League of Extraordinary Divers” in 2016.
She was soon able to teach scuba diving to others after she earned her certification. A group of male doctors refused to take her first class. She persuaded the students to enroll in the first part, skin diving, of her course and to let her know their opinions about her teaching. They all returned for Part II on scuba.
“I was proud of my first class,” she wrote in her autobiography, “Trailblazer: The Extraordinary Life of Diving Pioneer Dottie Frazier” (2019), “and of my new career as the first woman to become a scuba instructor in the world.”
Dorothy Adell Reider, a daughter to Francis and Laura (Davis) Reider in Long Beach, was born July 16, 1922. She lived one block from the Pacific Ocean. Her father owned motorboats as well as sailboats, and started taking her out on the sea when she was just a toddler.
“I managed to fall overboard at least once a day,” she wrote in her book, “but Dad said I did it on purpose whenever he said, ‘No, you may not go in the water.’”
When she was three, her parents divorced. She lived with her father for many years on a 28-foot yawl. She was also raised by her aunts and grandparents.
“I never knew who was going to be looking after me next,” she wrote. “I guess this is one of the reasons I became so self-reliant early in life.”
She told many stories about how her father encouraged her to dive. When she was 6 and anchored with him off Catalina Island, he summoned her to retrieve a coffeepot he’d dropped into 15 feet of water while cleaning it. (He couldn’t get it himself, he claimed, because he had a bad cold.) She was already a capable swimmer but hadn’t braved such a depth. With her father’s encouragement, she made the dive and recovered the pot.
“It wasn’t too long after that dive that I was making dives at depths that I couldn’t believe, picking up shells and salvaging things,” she told “The League of Extraordinary Divers.” “And then my dad gave me some spears.”
Her father gave her a homemade mask with fins and spearfishing equipment. She was able to catch lobster and abalone and take orders from locals. People would also hire her to retrieve wallets and other things they’d dropped into the sea.
In 1939, she graduated Polytechnic High School, Long Beach. She also spent a year as a secretary. She married Don Gath in 1940 and they had two sons, Darrell (and Donald) respectively. During World War II, she worked at Douglas Aircraft. After the war, she and Mr. Gath split.
In 1951, she married Jake Frazier. She had two more sons, David Frazier and Daniel Frazier. The marriage ended in divorce. In 1973, she was married to Mr. May. He survived her, along her sons Daniel, Donald, and seven grandchildren.
Ms. Frazier was a scuba instructor and also owned the Penguin Dive Shop in Long Beach. She designed and sold dry and wet suits. She learned hard-hat diving as well — the kind used in underwater commercial work — but didn’t pursue the career possibilities because, at around five feet tall and not much more than 100 pounds, she found the equipment too cumbersome and restraining.
Even in her 90s she was still energetic and adventurous. At 93 she went ziplining. She sold her last motorcycle in 2019. In the “Neutral Buoyancy” interview, she noted that longevity seemed to go along with diving.
“A lot of the original divers have made it to a great age,” she said. “Being underwater does things to your spirit.”
Source: NY Times
