- JIM McAFEE - First President University of Texas Skin & Scuba Diving Society

Jim McAfee (Jimmy Joseph McAffee) was a charter member and first President of the University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society in 1964. Jim's hometown was Edna, Texas. He attended the University of Texas at Austin from 1960 to 1966. His major was applied mathematics and now works in computer science as a manager for Applied Materials.

1. Were you at the very first meeting?

I was at the very first meeting. We started talking about experience. I actually learned to dive at 13, and so I had 7 years of diving experience when the club was being formed. I got elected President based on the fact I seemed to have more diving experience than anybody else at the time. We had a really good team starting out. The first Safety Officer was Earl Mitchell. Earl and I are still friends. He is living in North Carolina right now.

2. How did you keep in touch with Earl all these years? How did that happen?

We moved to California about the same time. He worked with me at Control Data for a while. We've actually got to be best friends out of the diving club. We've stayed in contact over the last 30 years.

3. How did you come to know that there was going to be a meeting to attend?

I noticed something in the Texan [ The Daily Texan, the campus newspaper] or I noticed something up on one of the bulletin boards in the Student Union. It was something like that and I said, "Oh, that looks like a lot of fun!" I am diver anyway so let go find out what we can do about it.

4. Do you remember in 1964 who were the other officers were other than you as President, Gary Yantis as Vice-President, and Earl Mitchell as Safety Officer?

I think Tim Davis was Treasurer. I cannot remember the Secretary's name.

5. During the first year did you have a Parliamentarian?

No, we did not. Another key training officer was Doug Duryea. He was Safety Officer the second or third year, I think.

6. He [ Doug Duryea ] wasn't an original officer?

He was not an original officer. I think he came in a couple of month later.

7. Was Doug Duryea at the first meeting?

I don't remember Doug being there.

8. You were the President according to Gary Yantis in the fall of 1964. Were you the President of the club in 1965?

I was the President, I think, until February 1965 when we had the next election. The second President was Jerry Derryberry.

9. Did he take over in March 1965?

Yes, that would have been right. I became Safety Officer at that time. I moved from President to Safety Officer. In 1966 I stayed as one of the trainer, one of the Instructors. For the four or five months I was there, I was one of the Instructors.

10. Do you have any club documents?

I have the charter member certificate and the instructor and diver certificate that we came up with. Do you have any of those old documents?

11. Tell me on the instructor certificate, the background, does it have a, what we called the "Sea Steer," the horned grouper?

That grouper with the long horns, it does. That was signed by me as President and Earl as Safety Officer. I have an Underwater Society Instructor certificate that was signed by Delbert Burton. That was done in 1966. He was President, it says for May 1966. That tells me who it was in 1966. He was the one that followed Jerry.

12. In 1966, Burt Burton was President?

Yes, and Doug Duryea was the Safety Officer. I have the Charter Member Certificate given to me and signed by me. It says, "Charter Member presented to Jimmy J. McAffee, University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society, President."

I have the member card that says I have the status of Safety Officer. That was signed by Earl. I have the Instructor's Certificate signed by Earl and me. I have a little Instructor card we had made up. The one that says the University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society has the sea horse with the scuba tank on it. I have those three certificates and those two cards. I will make copies and send them to you.

13. In 1965 Jerry Derryberry became President and you were Safety Officer? What office, if any, did Earl Mitchell hold?

I was Safety Officer. He became an Instructor diver.

14. Do you remember any other officers in 1965?

No. I really don't. Tim Davis had some position. Do you have his name? He's in Dallas. He's probably floating around Dallas somewhere. He married Peggy Lanius who was also in the club. The last I heard they were living in Dallas.

15. Tell me if you were going to talk to these young sea pups now, tell us your general memories from the time you went to the first meeting to the time you left the University?

What I remember is that we spent the most of the first four or five months trying to get the club set up. We decided early on what we really wanted to do was to teach people how to dive safely. That was the entire goal of the club, was to go on some good dives and teach as many people as we could how to do it in a safe and sane manner.

We set up the constitution. The bylaws and the constitution were the big thing that we did. The rest of the time we spent working on the course. We based it on the U.S. Diving Manual. Earl Mitchell had gone through the NAUI instructor's course. I think he was NAUI qualified. He was the first Safety Officer. He helped us set up the course. We did all the training and pool work based on the U.S. Navy diving course. That was our bible.

We did a lot of diving down at San Marcos. That was when we could manage to sneak into San Marcos Aquarena Springs. There was a back door to that. If you knew how to get there you could get in. The "backdoor" was just above the dam. It was private property that we had access to, through the guy that owned a dive shop in San Marcos.

We used to dive there and at Windy Point at Lake Travis. That is where we had all the qualification dives at Windy Point.

16. Was that Don Brod that owned that shop you were referring to?

Yes it was.

17. Was the shop at Aquarena or down stream?

The shop was somewhere in San Marcos. It moved a couple of times even while I was there. We had a whole cascade of tanks that we got from him and got refilled. We used them for the courses up here, and a big trailer.

18. Whom did the club buy the equipment trailer from?

I think we got it from Brod and the cascade system. The cascade system was sort of a lease thing. We paid him so much and we would go down and have it filled.

19. There were no shops in Austin?

There were no shops in Austin. The only shop that had any significant gear was Brod in San Marcos.

20. What other memories do you have?

Let's see, we had [ Jim laughs ], well I don't think I want to go into, but we had some fairly interesting parties. There was one up at, I think is now Lake LBJ. I remember Tim, Earl, and Jerry; we had been diving all afternoon. Nobody had brought any food; so, we found some fresh water clams. We decided we were going to cook them up in the coffee pot. Then we went around doling them out a little at a time. I remember everybody literally starving to death, ready to eat anything. We were all sitting there kind of looking into our cup at this stuff and wondering who was going to take the first drink. You know, nobody decided to do so. We all walked over and poured it back into the coffee pot. I think it was Doug Duryea's coffee pot. He says he still has it and has never been able to get anything back in it after that. It still retains its smell. That is one of the diving stories I remember.

We set up a couple of dives down in Galveston. Those went reasonably well.

As I recall, we got up to 50 or 60 members that second year. We ran an inordinate amount of people through the courses and gave them a little certificate and everything. As far as I know, some of them are still diving.

21. Who wrote the club's constitution?

Everybody that was on the leadership team. We had meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting and fought over it and finally got it ratified. I think the last meeting of the first year is when we ratified the constitution. Earl did a lot of work over the summer putting together a course outline. We worked with that the next year. We started running our courses that next year. We ran quite a few people through. We built up the membership of the club fairly rapidly using that course work. I think it was the downtown YWCA that had an indoor pool that we used. You know I have not done any significant swimming pool swimming since then. I go so sick of being in a swimming pool.

22. I checked with NAUI in trying to locate Earl Mitchell to see if they had records of his being an instructor. They did not, and it is not surprising to me since it has been so long ago. Gary Yantis said that he thought Earl was a NAUI instructor. I was wondering why Earl did not issue NAUI diving certification in addition to the club's certification when the courses were being taught?

I really do not know the answer to that. I don't think Earl finished the NAUI course. I think he finished everything but the final water dive. I think he had an illness and had to leave. I do not think he finished the certification. He was not a NAUI instructor. I don't think. We used everything that NAUI did.

When I moved to California, they did not recognize the University of Texas' certification. I had to re-certify. I said okay so hand me the test, and he said, "Now?", and I said "Yes." I think I took a 99 on the test. It was a good course. I felt very comfortable with anybody that we had trained in diving safely. That seemed to be born out when I came out here. The guy said, "Who taught you?", and I said the Texas Underwater Society did.

23. Tell me about Jerry Derryberry, the club artist, who created the club's mascots of the sea horse with a diving tank and the "Sea Steer," the grouper with long horns? Which mascot came first, the sea horse?

The sea horse was the first one. Jerry decide that was not enough. Jerry was an absolutely fantastic artist. He was the best. He could sit down with a pen an draw anything.

24. Do you remember the year/month that he created the sea horse mascot?

That sea horse mascot would have been created in March or April of '64. That was the first year we got started. We wanted a good symbol for the club to use. That was practically the first thing we came up with. The Sea Steer was created the second year, 1965. I think it was in the fall of '65. We wanted to use it on certificates.

25. So, you had two mascots that you used simultaneously, ultimately?

I think the grouper was going to replace the sea horse. The sea horse was first. It was being phased out by the grouper. It lasted a couple of years. After that I would expect the grouper on everything.

26. Did you have a white club jacket and when was that created?

That was created at the end of the first year. That would have been '64. We wore that all during the second year. It was made up that summer.

27. Who designed the jacket? How did that come about?

We had the patch that had been made up by Derryberry, right. We had the instructor's bar that went over it and we had the officer's bar that went under it. Derryberry was responsible for the design of all the symbols and patches and stuff.

28. How did the idea of having a jacket come about?

Probably one of those 2:00 A.M. coffee things at a local watering hole.

29. Was the "watering hole" The Plantation Restaurant?"

That was the Plantation Restaurant, just a little ways from 19^th Street and the Drag. We spent a lot of time there and actually a fair amount of time in the Student Union Building drinking coffee, so it could have come up there.

30. Where were the emblems located on the jacket?

I think on the left arm and on the left front breast is where the patch went with the President, Vice-President, and Instructor Diver.

31. Did the jacket have anything on the back?

No, it didn't. I later started skydiving and I put my skydiving emblem on the back of it.

32. When was the jacket produced?

It was around the end of the first summer. I think I remember us having them during the next year. We were suppose to wear them on the dive outings.

33. Were they made more than once or was it just one order?

Boy, I honestly don't remember. I don't think there was much more than one order. Nobody else wanted to spend the bread. We were all starving students.

34. The first patch that I have has "Underwater" across the top, "Society" across the bottom, the sea horse in the center, and UT to the left of that.

That's the first one. I don't remember us ever doing one with the grouper on it. I think they were talking about it when I graduated.

35. When did the club name change go from University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society, UTS & SDS, to University of Texas Underwater Society, UTUS?

I think it was September 1966 when Burt Burton was President. Getting rid of the "SDS" was part of the reason we dropped it. We did not want to be associated with that liberal bunch [Students for a Democratic Society, SDS ]. That was not what we were about. We didn't want any confusion. We were not a political organization. We just existed to go diving.

36. When did the first club news letter come out?

I do not really remember us putting out a newsletter as such. There were minutes of the meetings, but I don't remember actually publishing a newsletter. We were so involved in the first year and a half in trying to get all of our course material published. Ann [ Mitchell ] was the one. She was a teacher; she would use the reproducing machine [ mimeograph ] at the school to print all of our test and course work. We had to be a little surreptitious about it because we weren't allow to do that really. We could not afford to have it reproduced.

37. In 1964 you do not believe there was a newsletter?

No, I do not think so.

38. You do not think there was a newsletter in 1965?

There could have been in '66. We had gotten through all the publication of all the...[ diving course material ]. We were really spending all our energy trying to get the thing set up, so we really did not have time to do a newsletter. We would have published innumerable copies of the constitution and bylaws as we went through all the iterations. We would have meetings where the whole meeting all we did was talk about that and plan weekend dives. We are going to meet at Windy Point at 10:00 o'clock on Saturday, you know.

39. What did you do to promote the club besides teaching the dive course?

We got a couple articles in the Texan. I have a box in the garage. I might be able to come up with the original articles. It has a picture of Doug [ Duryea ] and I falling backwards into Barton Springs. What is really funny is that we were both wearing tanks that were bone dry. As soon as we went down, we had to come right back up as there was no air in those suckers.

We were interviewed a couple of times and we got that in. We would put up announcements about the upcoming course. We would put that in various locations on campus on the bulletin boards where people would likely show up.

40. Did you print your posters in the Texas Union Building?

Yes. There were places in the Union where you could always announce this stuff. We could use the classrooms at the University. They did not have a problem with that.

41. When did you start setting up a table up outside of Gregory Gym at registration? Did you do that? Do you remember what year that started?

Yes we did. I think it was registration for '66, '65,'66 school year. I know we didn't do it after the first summer, because we didn't think about it until someone came through registration and said that would be a good idea. We put up a table. We got quite a few kids coming through that way.

42. There was a large red dive flag that was draped across that table. Do you know who created that flag or how it came about?

Boy, I don't remember that at all. There was a husband and wife team and they were good at that type of stuff. They might have sewn it together for us. Tom Dykstra and his wife may have done that flag for us.

43. Gary Yantis started the club, but he had to leave the club shortly after the club was formed in order to get his grades up, so there has been lots of missing information in those early years.

I was always disappointed that Gary did not stick around because he was the one really responsible for it. He put that first meeting together. There is no question in my mind that it would have never existed if it had not been for him.

44. Tell me the story of the club dive to Clear Lake after the Boating Act of 1965 had been passed and one of our club members got arrested in testing the legality of this law?

I was there. The story is that this was an on going battle between Don Brod and the Clear Lake group that owned the glass bottom boats and all that. Brod wanted the ability to dive in that area. He felt like it was public access. They did not actually own that entire lake. It was put up with a public dam and so there should be right to send divers in there. It was a gorgeous spot to dive. When they passed the act, he said he wanted us to go out there and dive. Since he had done lots of favors for the club and we like to dive there anyway, we did not care much about the law. He said they are going to come out and ask you to leave, and if you say no, they are going to arrest you. I want that to happen and I will back you. I want to get the case to court.

He wanted to get a ruling in court to see if that law was legal. We did exactly what he said. Sure enough they came out with a sheriff in the boat and asked us to please get out of the water. It was restricted and we refused. They were actually talking to me. [ Tape run out and I had to flip the tape. Jim was thinking about that he was about to graduate and going to work for the government. If he was the one that got arrested, then his career would be adversely affected. ]

......And the first thing they were going to do was a security clearance and the first thing they were going to ask me was, have you ever been arrested?

So, we talked it over and Doug [Duryea] said, "I'm not ever going to do anything, so I'll be arrested." Okay, you be arrested. They came over and said we are ready to arrest you. I said you are going to arrest him. They said okay. Supposedly, the case was dropped. It never actually got to court. They declined to bring charges, as I recall, because Brod had all the lawyers on earth, or at least one lawyer. He was going to go to court with Doug and challenge the constitutionality of that law. As I recall, they did not take it to court. They dropped it.

I have no idea whether we kept diving [there] cause I was getting out of the club about that time. They bought the land that we were using for access. They got around it by the fact there was no way in.

44. The Boating Act was passed and then club challenged it as such?

The club challenged it on behalf of Don Brod who wanted access to the diving area.

45. Were you on that dive or standing on the bank when that happened?

I was in the water. I was on the dive. We had probably 20 or 25 club members there.

46. The Sheriff said I have to arrest somebody?

He said we are not going to arrest everybody, but we need to arrest somebody, and you do need to get out of the water. We had signals so, I could do a whistle and get everybody's attention and get them out of the water, so we did. Everybody got out. It was really kind of neat. He said where are you going to be? I said you know where we get in is right over here. We will all swim over there and you can come over and meet us. So he went back in the boat. We got out and were getting dressed. Five or ten minutes later the sheriff came rolling up. It was not what you call a really strenuous arrest. We could have if we wanted to boogie right on out of there.

47. Do you remember when the sheriff took Doug away?

What I really remember is what they did is they took down his name, address, phone number, and all that stuff. They said okay we will let you know when you are suppose to be done here. They didn't take him away at all, even though you are quote "arrested " and we are going to book you. He did not actually go to jail.

48. This took place in 1965, didn't it?

Yes.

49. Do remember what month in '65?

It seems like it was in the late spring. No, it was in the fall because I would have already gotten the job at Lockheed. So it would probably have been November. Late fall of '65, they passed that law, I think, in the summer of '65.

50. Do you remember what provoked them to pass that law?

Yeah. What provoked them to pass that law was that they were tired of seeing divers down there when they would bring the glass bottom boats by. They passed the law strictly to keep divers out of that particular area.

51. When they passed the law, Aquarena did not own all the land around the lake?

They did not own that one piece. They owned everything but that piece. That was the way we got in. That was the public access that Brod somehow got permission for us to use it. It was a little tiny dirt road off to one side. It was a tongue of the main area. You had to swim about 50 yards down this little stream to get out into the main area.

52. Where was the entrance to this dirt road entrance?

It was on the right between the main entrance and before you crossed over the San Marcos River at the bridge. It was a big strip of land. When you swam out into the main area, you went left to get to the dam and the dam was about 250 yards away. You were maybe 500 yards downstream from the main area. We never went into the main area where they had the shows. We were in the area where they had maybe 50 feet of water. It was absolutely clear. We would be done there diving and sometimes the glass bottom boats would come over. They bought that land so there was no other way to get in.

53. Just before you go across the river, there is an apartment complex called Clear Springs Apartments. Was that there at that time?

I don't remember that at all.

54. Was there a dive shop at Lake Travis in the mid-sixties?

About the time I left the University in 1966, I bought a snorkel from Brod out there.

55. What about the Army and Vietnam? When you graduated in '66, it was hot?

I went to work at NASA so I had a defense exemption. I spent the next 20 years in the defense industry. I never went. Doug went. Doug ended up in 'Nam, but I don't remember anyone else who did.

56. Having located you is like finding the missing link to the club. You have filled in lots of missing information.

The nice thing about having being there when it all started.......and actually, those are some of my fondest memories. I loved that club! It made the last couple of years of school be fun. I kind of got out of diving when I moved out to California because it's too bloody cold. I keep saying if I move any place where there is warm water I'll start diving again.

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© Copyright 1998 Paul Johnston