On Feb. 6, 1964, Thursday evening, forty to fifty people met at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas and formed the University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society (UTS&SDS).  Members Gary Yantis ⁽¹⁾ and Robert Wogstad were responsible for founding the club.   The first meeting was held in the Geology Building, presently Will C. Hogg Building, in Auditorium Room 14.  James McAfee was voted President and Gary Yantis became Vice-President.   Dr. Alan Scott of the Department of Marine Geology was the first faculty sponsor.  Early in the club's history, there were two club mascots. The original mascot, created in March or April 1964, was the long horn seahorse wearing a scuba tank on its back. Around the Fall of 1965, another mascot was introduced, the "Sea Steer,"  a grouper with long horns coming from its head.  Both emblems would show up on future membership cards, diving diplomas, and club scuba diving certification cards.  In late 1964, the club had a white jacket that had the sea horse patch with instructor's bar over it and officer's bar under it.  This jacket was to be worn at club outings and dives.  Artist member Jerry Derryberry created the  Sea Horse and Sea Steer mascots along with the patch design and its associated instructor and officer bars.

One membership card shown below has the original club name on it.  Its wording is:  Certifies (Your Name) as a member of UTS & SDS and holds the status of Skin Diver.  It was signed by  President Delbert (Burt) Burton, now deceased, and Doug Duryea, Safety Officer.  Membership Expires 4/1/67.  On the back side of this card is an abbreviated Navy Dive Table.  On the left side is the "No-Decompression Limits" from 50 feet to 190 feet and on the right side Decompression Schedule for 20 - 10 foot stops for depth from 50 - 190 feet.

On the cards shown below, the one on the left is the club's Diving Instructor Card, obtained by going through the club's own instructor course and is signed by the President  Warren P. Schneider and Safety Officer Larry Carroll and dated 5-10-1968.  This card was presented to me at the 1968 Annual Awards Banquet held at the Bergstrom Officers Club. The card on the right is a membership card signed by President Burt Burton and had a place for the Secretary to sign.  An expiration date follows of March, 1967.  Notice that both of these cards now indicate the name of the club to be, "University of Texas Underwater Society (UTUS)."  The club's official name registered with the University of Texas did not always correspond with the club's name appearing on the membership cards.  Generally, a large group of membership and instructor cards were printed up at one time.  These cards were used until the supply ran out and then the "correct" club name was printed on the new cards.  For example,  the club changed its name from the University of Texas Underwater Society to University Underwater Society in February 1968.  All my membership and instructor cards expiring from Sept-1968 to Sept. 1969 show the name "University of Texas Underwater Society" when the official name was  really "University Underwater Society."  Another example of using cards until the supply runs out is the card shown above with the expiration date of 4/1/67 bearing the name University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society, the original club name.  It was around September 1966 when the club had officially changed its name to University of Texas Underwater Society.

Monthly meetings were held at the Texas Union Building.  There was a party at someone's home or apartment once a month and a couple of dives per month, generally one dive on Saturday and one on Sunday.  This allowed the greatest number of people to attend dives given various weekend schedules.  The titles of officers were: President, responsible for running and planning the monthly meetings and writing the newsletter;  Vice-President, responsible for getting the entertainment for the monthly meeting;  Secretary, responsible for getting the newsletter printed and mailed out and putting meeting notices in The Daily Texan, the University's student newspaper; Treasurer, responsible for collecting dues, issuing membership cards, and maintaining the club's bank account;  Public Relations, responsible for generating favorable publicity about the club to attract new members; Safety Officer, responsible for conducting club dives safely and enforcing club safety rules on a dive;  Parliamentarian, responsible for seeing that Robert's Rules of Order were followed during voting on and debating of various issues during the meeting;  Equipment Officer, responsible for keeping, maintaining, and renting of club diving equipment.

Generally, the club met on the first Thursday of the month.  The meeting would start at 7:30 P.M. and lasted about an hour and a half.  However on election night, the meeting might last for 3 hours. The President would call an Executive Council meeting, a meeting of all the club's officers, once a month, generally during the second week of the month.  At this meeting, many times held in 1968 at Secretary /Instructor Kathy McCue's place on 910 Baylor Street, the next month's activities were planned and responsibilities were assigned.  At this point, the Secretary would have the information necessary to start the monthly newsletter publishing process.  The idea was to have the newsletter arrive the Tuesday or Wednesday before the meeting on the first Thursday of each month.

Before the advent of the use of the computer for the newsletter in the mid-eighties, the newsletter was typed onto a stencil and then taken up to the Student Union Offices and printed out on a mimeograph machine.  The ink color was a purplish-blue. Then the newsletter was hand folded , stamped, addressed and mailed.  The Secretary position was probably the office that required the most work.  The original post office box for the club was number 8372 at University Station with a combination lock requiring dialing in "HIGAB" to unlock it.

Behind table in January, 1967, Burt Burton (left, Pres.1966); Bob Ireland (right, Pres.1967)

There were two other methods that the club would regularly use to let the student body know that the University had a diving club.  One was posters printed up at the Student Union Building by our members announcing our meetings.  Then, these posters were time stamped at an office in the Student Union and tied around trees with string on campus.  Permission to hang signs was verified on the poster by the time stamp. University grounds crew would look at these time stamps and remove posters that had been up a certain length of time.  The other method was having a booth set up outside of registration at Gregory Gym in the fall and spring semesters.  One of our members made a large dive flag which was draped across a table to attract attention of the students.  Students would be told about club meetings and benefits of being a club member.  Besides the obvious benefits of belonging to a diving club, the club provided food on several of the club dives.  Planned strategically, a member could recoup his dues by eating the food provided.  Also, members could very reasonably rent club scuba equipment on a weekly rental basis when it was not being use in club courses.  For example the May 1970 newletter shows the following items' weekly rental rates:  Tank and back pack,  $1.00;  regulator,  $1.50;  mask, fins, snorkel , $0.25 each.  Another location for a registration booth was in front of the Union Building on the West Mall.

The club's purpose was to provide a place where divers could have access to other dive buddies, go diving, comradery, and be entertained.  In order to promote the new sport of diving and promote membership in the club, a diving certification course was developed  by Earl Mitchell in 1964.  Basic certification levels of scuba diving and instructor ratings were provided by the club.  In the Fall of 1967, 164 members were listed on the roster.  In the Fall of 1968, 163 members were listed.  The inexpensive dive course provided the club with a healthy club membership.  Twenty new club members were added to the roster each Fall and Spring semester when a beginning scuba course was taught.  To take the course, a student first had to pay dues to join the club.  Therefore in one years time, at least forty new club members were gained through the club's beginning scuba course.  This course was one of the most important factors to the club's membership participation and financial well-being in its early years.  Records also show that Alan MacComb, safety officer, was the contact for a 2 week summer course beginning June 24, 1968.

National diving certification organizations were in their infancy in the mid-sixties.  Many private instructors issued their own brand of certification at this time. To take the club's very reasonably priced dive course, one had to be a dues paid member of the club first.  Dues for Fall 1967 semester were $4.00 per semester or $7.50 for a year. The club's scuba course was $25 with all equipment supplied, except a wet suit.  The text used by the club for its Basic Scuba Certification was The New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving ⁽²⁾.  There were: 1 Pool Swim Test, 6 lectures, 2 exam sessions (one for skin diving and one for scuba diving knowledge), 5 two-hour pool sessions at the YWCA and two open water dives. One dive was a snorkel trip to the San Marcos River at City Park in San Marcos, Texas;  the other dive was to Lake Travis, Windy Point.  The dive at Lake Travis would consist of mask and regulator clearing, buddy breathing, and a short underwater tour of the area.  When the club was first formed, the final training dive was at Clear Lake, a part of Aquarena Springs in San Marcos, Texas. After the Boating Act of 1965, training dives were conducted at Windy Point on Lake Travis.

 

Here is some of the material written in the Instructor's Manual by our own members:

1. "The Responsibility Of An Instructor" by Earl E. Mitchell, Jr., Senior Instructor

2. "Claustrophobic Reactions In S.C.U.B.A. Diving" by Charles R. Ervin, Jr., December 15, 1966

3. "Oceanography: A Layman's Overview" by D. L. Kuiken, University of Texas

4. "Introduction To Intermediate Diving" by Larry Carroll, October 31, 1967

5. "The Casual Art Of Skin Diving" by Charles R. Ervin, Jr., September 12, 1967

6. "Diving Course Student Notebook, Part I" by Earl E. Mitchell and Ann D. Mitchell, Revised 1966

7. "Instructors Course Final Examination Question Booklet" by Doug Duryea, Instructor
 

Early on, the club purchased an equipment trailer with an air cascade system in order to teach its diving courses.  Initially , the club had to haul the trailer to San Marcos to the only dive shop in the area to have its cascade system filled so the dive students' tanks could be filled for classes.  Eventually, the club acquired an air compressor to fill its club tanks.  It was mounted on a trailer so that it could be taken to club dives.  The club's equipment trailer held an air cascade system along with 10 complete sets of scuba gear. However, maintenance of the air compressor required specialized knowledge.   On Nov. 11, Saturday, 1967 Equipment Officer Larry Carroll scheduled the compressor to run from 10-11 A.M. and1-2 P.M.  Ten tanks were required for the compressor to be turned on.  The compressor and cascade system were sold  late1968.   On Saturday, Nov. 23, 1968 a special meeting was held to discuss the compressor.  I believe the compressor was traded to Don Brod of ASCO Dive Shop for a number of  "free" aircards that were good until July 1972.  The club in turn sold these aircards of 10 airfills to club members  for $7.50 to recover money from the trade and used these cards to fill club tanks for its diving course.  The aircards were priced so that a member would be able to buy air at about one half of what they would pay from the dive shop.

 Pool sessions were divided into two groups.  One group had pool training on Monday evening and the other group had a session on Wednesday evening. On Sunday evening both groups would meet at different times.  The equipment trailer was hauled over to the YWCA , located on the west corner of Guadalupe and 18th Street.  The equipment was taken into the northwest side door going down stairs to the pool.  The first Sunday pool session of 10 students would be from 6:30-8:30 P.M. and the second group of student would come from 8:30-10:30 P.M..

The club's tanks and equipment purchases in the mid-sixties were initially made Don Brod's dive shop in San Marcos, Texas.  Eventually, Mr. Brod opened up ASCO dive shop near Lake Travis.  Mr. Brod was probably one of the first on the scene of scuba diving instruction in Austin.  His original shop location was just a short distance north on Hwy. 620 from the intersection with Hwy. 2222 on the west side of Hwy. 620.  It was a small shop. When you walked in, there was a small lunch counter where Don could cook you a hamburger.  After a few years , ASCO was move south on Hwy. 620 just a short distance from the Hwy. 2222 intersection, again on the west side of Hwy. 620.  Don lived in the back part of this second shop and had the sales area in the front of the building.

In the late '60s, the second shop in Austin was Aqualand on Burnet Road, just north of 45th Street a short distance on the west side of Burnet Road.  This was run by a brother and sister, Dan and Lucy.  They were of college age.  Dan was an accounting major at the University of Texas.  Their father owned the store and owned Dan's, a liquor package store chain in Austin. During the late sixties or early seventies, Aqualand closed down.  In 1972, Scuba Point would now be the second dive shop in Austin. It was located on Hwy. 2222 on the south side just before the intersection of Hwy. 620.  It had boat storage units, a indoor pool, class room for training, sales area, and a 50 cubic foot per minute air compressor called "Gold Finger Junior".  It was painted gold.  The larger compressor "Gold Finger," a 100 cubic foot per minute compressor, was located at Scuba Point at Possum Kingdom Lake in north Texas.  The club would occassionally have dives at Possum Kingdom Lake. Both Scuba Points were originally owned by Tom and Mary Davis.  I was the first assistant manager at Scuba Point in Austin when it opened in 1972.  I taught diving here.  Chuck Hamblin was the first manager.  Chuck and I were SCIP ( Soutwest Council Instructor Program), NAUI (National Association of Underwater Instructors), and PADI (Professional Association of Diving Instructors) rated scuba instructors.  In 1972-73, I was the President of the dive club while working at Scuba Point and attending the University.  At that time, there was only three permanent  working instructors in Austin: Don Brod, Chuck Hamblin, and myself.

As mentioned, the original name of the club was The University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society (UTS&SDS). During the mid-sixties, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were an active anti-war group against the Vietnam War.  The club changed its name around September 1966 to University of Texas Under Water Society (UTUS).  The members wanted to make sure that the club was not associated with the SDS.  According to Chuck Ervin, the club was getting mail delivered to the club's post office box addressed to UT SDS.  Since the abbreviations of both the dive club and the SDS were so close, there was a feeling that our club may be investigated by the FBI, mistakenly for anti-war activity.  To prevent this, the club changed its name to University of Texas Underwater Society, UTUS.   In Feb.1968 , the University of Texas had expanded its campuses to several locations in Texas and changed its name to the University of Texas at "what ever city" in Texas it was located.  The University came up with a ruling that no campus organization could have "University of Texas" in its name.  At this time the club changed its name to University Underwater Society (UUS). It remained this way until the September 1989 when the name was changed again to its present name, University Scuba Club (USC).

 In researching details for this history, past newsletters became vital.  Below, on the left, is a photograph of the return address on the Feb. 1968 newsletter postmarked Feb.1, 1968.  The club 's name "University of Texas Underwater Society" appears in the return address.  Below, on the right, is a photograph of the return address on the March 1968 newsletter postmarked March 6, 1968.  The return address now indicates the name "Underwater Society."  Having been at an early 1968 meeting, I remember the discussion about changing our name.  It was one where the club had no choice but to change its name, given the new University rules.  The "University of Texas" could not be used in combination with our club name.  I remember someone saying that it would be no problem to cut out the University of Texas part of our return address rubber stamp to comply.  Sure enough, by March 1968, the imprint of the stamp had been changed.  Also, in the March and April 1968  newsletters, the "Underwater Society" was used as their headings.  The June 20,1968 newsletter had "University Underwater Society" as its heading and had "Greetings from the UUS:" as its opening greeting.  Interestingly , the 1968 summer club roster had "University of Texas Underwater Society" as its heading.  It took a while for the new name University Underwater Society to be used consistently.

Two sets of club officers were elected each year.  One for the summer month of June through August, and one set for the Spring and Fall semesters from  February to May and September through January.  The summer officers were those that would be around the campus during the summer months and could be the same as or different from the Fall/Spring officers.  In the late sixties officers were elected in December.   Spring/Fall officers would take office in February through May and then again in September to January.  Over time, the elections were pushed back to anywhere from March to May.  The initial thinking of having officer elections early in the year was to allow the new officers to have the counsel of the former officers until the end of May. In this way, come September when the new school year started, the "new" officers were already trained and ready to get the new year off with a little experience under their belt.  The September  and January/February first meeting of the semester must be well organized, publicized and have good entertainment in order to generate a good turnout.  This makes it easy for the officers to collect dues and have money to run the club on the rest of the year.  If the club stumbles on the first meeting of the Fall, especially, and Spring semesters, the club will struggle the rest of the year.

Our monthly dives were conducted at the lakes and rivers in the central Texas area.  Our pre-dive meeting place was at the Plantation Restaurant at 503 W. 19^th Street (now MLK Blvd., Martin Luther King Blvd.).  Later this establishment became Uncle Van's Pancake House, and then Mr. Gatti's Pizza. Members would start arriving around 9 A.M. and leave for the dive site around 10 A.M.  Some members would have coffee and others would eat breakfast.  After a while of friendly chatting, we would leave and go to the dive site of the day.

The clear waters of the San Marcos River offered a good beginning dive for both Spring and Fall Semesters. Our San Marcos turtle derby was an event where we saw who could catch the most, biggest, smallest, and most unique turtles. All this was done while snorkeling in these shallow waters. We generally met at City Park in San Marcos.

There were two occasions when music and dive locations made and impression on my mind.  When I think of certain music, I think of the dive site and vice-versa.  The first time was when I rode with Burt Burton ( club President, Fall, 1996-1967) to Canyon Lake.  It was a cold winter day with very heavy fog.  On the drive to the Lake, visibility was only a couple of car lengths ahead.  Roger Miller's song "Westminster Abbey" was playing "Pendulum swing like a pendulum do; bobbies on bicycles two by two..."  When we got to Canyon Lake, we drove down a boat ramp and got the front wheels of the car in the water before we realized that we were about to drive into the lake.  The fog being so thick blended in with the sky and waterline.  The dive was memorable because we saw fresh water jelly fish.  These jelly fish are about the diameter of a quarter.  You have to have your eyes focused about six inches away in order to see them. They have a four-leaf design inside their medusa.  Around the outer edge are tiny cilia type legs.  This was the first time that I had seen fresh water jelly fish.  I remember one of the lady divers poping up out of the water and yelled out that there were jelly fish in the water.  As I was suiting up, I thought yea, right! Well, she was!

The other music/dive memory is during the late sixties during "Dead Week." Fall finals use to be mid-January.  The first couple of days were devoted to study.  There were no classes.  Then finals were held on the last days of the week, hence, Dead Week.  When I should have been studying, I went with one of the club members to the Comal River in New Braunfels.  The Comal river is formed by a spring and flows into the Guadalupe River.  The Comal is the shortest river in Texas.  At that time, part of the springs flowed through an electrical generating plant and then discharged into the river. This warmed the waters up making for some nice winter diving.  The limestone bottom and clear water made a nice skin or scuba dive.

Sometimes the club would combine a night dive at the Comal River with going to Wurstfest, a Spring event in New Braunfels.  Float down the river in the early evening; then go to the Wurst Hall later.  As we floated down the river with our dive lights on, the drunks from the festival were sitting along the banks of the river hooting and hollering at us as we floated by.  Sometimes one of them  would fall into the river with great commotion.

 

Lake Travis is the reliable diving standby the club dives the most.  One winter trip to Devil's Canyon at Inks Lake, I caught a two and half foot yellow spotted gar by hand. Various club members had their picture taken holding the gar along the shore.  I think we had the gar out of the water so long photographing it that it may have done it in, if floating belly up in the water after releasing  it was any indication.

Summers provided us with Gulf diving: oil rigs, Flower Gardens, V.A. Fogg, liberty ships, and Padre Island dives with other dive clubs.  Come Spring Break, club trips were planned to Florida or Cozumel or the interior of Mexico like Media Luna.  In 1967, a few of our club members (Chuck Ervin, Dr. Wylie Jordan, Burt Burton, and Sam Withers) tried to drive down to Cozumel to scope it out for a future Spring Break trip.  By way of a wrong turn, they ended up in Isla de Mujeres.  They had a good time there anyway.  In 1968, the club had its first dive to Cozumel.  In 1969, the second trip happened there.  For many years, the club would stay at Hotel Lopez, just off the main plaza, and eat next door at the Chichen Itza Restaurant, also the motor bike/car rental place.

At the end of the Spring semester,the club would hold an annual awards banquet.  These were held at the Bergstrom Officers Club at Bergstrom Air Force Base, now the site of the new Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.  The other spot was the Villa Capri Motel on the west side of IH 35 near campus.  The Villa is no longer there.  On May 10, 1968 the awards banquet subsidized by the club cost the club member only $2.50 for a steak dinner at the Bergstrom Officers Club.  On Feb. 5, 1968 a Point System  headed by John Marmaduke was set up to award points for various diving activities.  At the end of the Spring Semester, points would be totaled and winners  would be awarded prizes at the Awards Banquet.

First Place. Prize:  Instamatic camera with underwater case built by member Terry Williams and Trophy.  Winner:  Kathy McCue.

Second Place:  Prize:  Longine-Wittnauer diving watch donated by Zale's.  Winner:  Celia Green.

Novice Diver Division: Prize:  $15 gift certificate from Aqualand.  Winner:  Lynn Cottingham.

The UUS Service Award went jointly to members Chuck Erwin and Burt Burton.

Underwater Photography Contest Winner was Alan MacComb for a scene of UUS divers on Palancar Reef in Cozumel, Mexico.

At the Awards Banquet, humorous awards were given out and new club dive instructors issued their certifications.  These awards were given for reasons of something you were not, or something you really were.  John Marmaduke, club artist, drew monster Valentine-type pictures with the appropriate title and placed them in a frame.  In 1969, the year the Batman tv series was popular, Jim Keith and Robert Woodring  won the "Dynamic-Duo" award for their wives having babies that semester.  I received the "Photographer of the Year Award" for my light meter in a plexiglass jar leaking on my first hop off the boat on the club's 1969 Cozumel Spring Break trip.  These simple awards were treasured by its recipients.

Over the years there have been many talented people associated with the scuba club. Dana Mardaga, who joined the club the Fall of 1976 , was the first lady President in the Summer 1978 through Spring 1979.  She was one of the club's talented artist that came to be associated with the club for many years.  She was the original artist that produced many beautiful designs that were used in the scuba club's first tee-shirt productions.   It was always nice to see what new design she would come up with at the start of each year.  Another talented person, who has held many offices, long associated with our club, and still current faculty club sponsor, is Tim Kennedy.   In the late seventies, he was a budding radio, television, and film major.  He produced short films that  would be shown at club meetings and parties.  One very funny one was called "Muscle In Beach."  Tim has provided the club with many years of  excellent service, bridging the early years to the present.

I have been associated with the dive club since 1967 when I became a member.  In 1968, I was Assistant Equipment Officer. In 1969, Ray Jones, the Equipment Officer, a graduate physics major, drowned scuba diving with his buddy at Hamilton 's Pool, a scenic central Texas landmark.  At this time, I became Equipment Officer.  After this the club required the wearing of a dive vest.  In the early days of diving, the diving vest was an optional piece of equipment.  The only other serious diving accident in the early years was when Kathy McCue suffered from decompression sickness after a cold winter dive.  After she got home, she initially experienced extreme fatigue.  After other symptoms appeared and she talked with another club instructor, she went to Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas and was successfully treated at their recompression facility.  In 1969, I was one of the club's diving instructors, after completing the club's instructor course taught by Doug Duryea, Larry Carroll, Jim Keith, and Chuck Ervin.  In the Fall of 1975, Dr. Robert Helmreich became the club's third faculty sponsor and was so for many years.  He was in the psychology department and had worked on the Navy's Sea Lab and Tektite projects and afterwards with NASA's astronaut program.  The first time I saw Dr. Helreich was after coming up from a dive at Mansfield Dam.  He was standing next to his spiffy black Jaguar  covertible sports car.  A group of students had gathered around him to chat.  He was wearing a Navy Parachute Team jacket.  I thought that James Bond had come to visit our club.  Another good guy, was Dr. Wylie Jordan ,a physician at the Student Health Center.  He was a good friend to the club and always a fun travel companion to have on club trips.

After graduation in 1969, I spent two years in the Army Combat Engineers.  I  received an early out to come back to the University in August 1971.  During the 1970-72 period of time, the club was in a weakened state of membership and participation.  I think most of the most experienced members and diving instructors graduated from the University during the 1969-71 period, leaving the club in this state.   It appears that Fall 1969 was the last time the club taught its own diver training course. This meant that on a yearly basis,at least 40 new members would not be coming in to the club from diving lessons.   Around this time, courses sponsored by national diving certification agencies started to become readily availiable.  Having a narionally recognized certification card was becoming increasingly important to the diver.  In the March 1971 newsletter ,club President Joseph Guerrero recognized the seriousness of the situation by stating the following:  "What we are proposing is to change the club format which right now is (and I painfully admit it) based on the beer loving boozo, diving for the sake of diving and providing the club diver with some inexpensive rentals.  What needs to be done is to change all of this."  President Guerrero went on to propose introducing club members to various aspects of advanced diving and to raise dues to $10/year, $7/semester or $5/summer plus buying some specialized diving equipment like underwater lights.

 I  became President of the University Underwater Society from 1972-73.  By having good entertainment at club meetings, collecting dues to run the club, getting the newsletter out, and having a good core of officers to divide the work up, the club started coming back to life.  Life for the club has gone on.  Students come and go and the vitality of the club is sometimes that way too, but it has managed to continue on.  In the Spring of 1989, I helped organized a 25th anniversary reunion at the regularly scheduled meeting.  At this meeting, past members of the club in the 60's-80's, who were still in Austin, told what the club had meant to them and how they had participated in activities.  Some of the older members that I remember being there were:  Burt Burton, Chuck Ervin, Quintin Martin, Mary Allen, Jerry Johnson, Tim Kennedy, Jody Guerrero, Ryan Dumont and Gary Yantis, founder.  All of these people had played important roles in the club's history from active members, instuctors, to officers. 

In September 1988, computers instead of the mimeograph machine were first used to publish the club's newsletter. The last mailed (postal) newletter was in May 1998.  Today, the club uses email messages and its web page to keep members informed of upcoming activities. The University Scuba Club is a vital club. The club has its web page to keep its members updated and moving into the modern diving era.

Come February 6, 2004 the University Scuba Club will be 40 years old.⁽⁴⁾⁽⁵⁾  This is something that all the dedicated members can feel proud of.  There have been literally hundreds and hundreds of talented nice people, too numerous to mention but not forgotten, that have bubbled through the clubs membership.  The club has provided me with years of friends and warm fellowship. Being associated with it has been a very pleasant life experience .  May the University Scuba Club continue to flourish and prosper in the years to come!

Paul Johnston - April 6, 1998

Revised - June 8, 2000; September 28, 2001; May 9, 2016

1.  Gary Yantis, "History: The University of Texas Skin and Scuba Diving Society", February 1989.

Newsletter of the University Underwater Society, Vol. 25, No. 1, Page 4.

2.  The New Science of Skin and Scuba Diving, A Project of the Council for National Cooperation in Aquatics, Association Press, New York, Copyright©1968,1962,1957.

3.  "Texas Virgins", by Bill Barada, Skin Diver Magazine, December 1968, pp. 28-31, p.60.

4.  Interviews with Jim McAfee, first club President.

5. Interview with Gary Yantis, club founder.
 
 

General Research Notes

University Scuba Club - The Early Years

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