Carl Maxie Brashear (January 19, 1931 – July25, 2006) was the first African
American to become a U.S. Navy Master Diver, rising to the position in
1970.
Early life
Brashear was born on January 19, 1931, in Tonieville,
Kentucky , the sixth of eight children to sharecroppers
McDonald and Gonzella Brashear. In 1935, the
family settled on a farm in Sonora, Kentucky .
Brashear attended Sonora Grade School from
1937 to 1946.
Career
Brashear enlisted in the U.S. Navy on
February 25, 1948, shortly after the Navy had been desegregated by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. He graduated from the U.S. Navy Diving & Salvage School in 1954, becoming the first African-American to attend and graduate from the Diving & Salvage School and the first African-American U.S. Navy Diver. While attending diving
school in Bayonne, New Jersey , Brashear faced
hostility and racism. He found notes on his
bunk saying, “We’re going to drown you today, nigger!” and “We don’t want any nigger divers.” Brashear received
encouragement to finish from First Class Boatswain’s
Mate Rutherford, and graduated 16
out of 17. Brashear
first did work as a diver retrieving approximately
16,000 rounds of ammunition that fell off a
barge which had broken in half and sunk to the
bottom. On his first tour of shore duty in
Quonset Point, Rhode Island his duties included
the salvaging of airplanes, including one Blue
Angel and recovering multiple dead bodies. Brashear
was assigned to escort the presidential ship
the Barbara Ann to Rhode Island. He met President
Eisenhower and received a small knife that
said, “To Carl M. Brashear. From Dwight D. Eisenhower,
1957. Many, many thanks.”
After making chief in 1959 he
stayed at Guam for three years doing mostly
demolition dives.
Leg amputation and recovery
In January 1966, in an accident now known
as the
Palomares incident, a B28 nuclear bomb was lost
off the coast of Palomares, Spain after two United
States Air Force aircraft of the Strategic Air
Command (SAC), a B-52G Stratofortress bomber and
a KC-135A Stratotanker aerial refueling
aircraft collided during aerial refueling . Brashear
was serving aboard the USS Hoist (ARS-40) when
it was dispatched to find and recover the
missing bomb for the Air Force. The warhead
was found after two and a half months of
searching. For his service in helping to
retrieve the bomb, Brashear was later awarded
the Navy and Marine Corps Medal – the highest Navy award for non-combat heroism. During the bomb recovery operations on March 23, 1966, a line used for towing broke loose, causing a pipe to strike Brashear's left leg below the knee, nearly shearing it off. He was evacuated to Torrejon Air Base in Spain, then to the USAF Hospital at Wiesbaden Air Base , Germany ; and finally to the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia . Beset with persistent infection and necrosis , his left leg was eventually amputated. Brashear
remained at the Naval Regional Medical Center
in Portsmouth from May 1966 until March 1967
recovering and rehabilitating from the amputation.
From March 1967 to March 1968, Brashear was
assigned to the Harbor Clearance Unit Two,
Diving School, preparing for return to full
active duty and diving. In April 1968,
after a long struggle, Brashear was the first
amputee diver to be (re)certified as a U.S. Navy
diver. In 1970, he became the first African-American
U.S. Navy Master Diver , and served ten more
years beyond that, achieving the rating of
Master Chief Boatswain's Mate in 1971.
Brashear was motivated by his beliefs that
"It's not a sin to get knocked down; it's
a sin to stay down" and "I ain't going to let nobody steal my dream".
"Sometimes I would come back from a run, and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump. I wouldn't go to sick bay. In that year, if I had gone to sick bay, they would have written me up. I didn't go to sick bay. I'd go somewhere and hide and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it--an old remedy. Then I'd get up the next morning and run." – Carl Brashear
Retirement
BMCM (MDV) Brashear retired from the U.S. Navy on April 1,
1979 as a Master Chief Petty Officer (E-9) and
Master Diver. He then served as a civilian
employee for the government at Naval Station
Norfolk , Norfolk, Virginia and retired in 1993
with the grade of GS-11 .
Personal life
Brashear married and divorced three times: Junetta
Wilcoxson (1952–1978), Hattie R. Elam (1980–1983), and Jeanette A. Brundage (1985– 1987). He had four
children: Shazanta (1955– 1996), DaWayne,
Phillip, and Patrick. Brashear's
grand-nephew is former New York Rangers left
wing Donald Brashear.
Pictured left is Carl Brashear and Cuba
Gooding Jr. on the set of 20th Century Fox's Men of Honor . Carl
served as a technical advisor on the film.
Cuba Gooding, Jr. played the role of
Brashear in Men of Honor, a movie inspired by the life of Carl Brashear.
Brashear died of respiratory and heart
failure at the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center , Portsmouth, Virginia on July 25, 2006. He is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia . Carl
Brashear Foundation After his death, his sons
DaWayne and Phillip Brashear started the Carl
Brashear Foundation in his honor.
Service Medal Honors
Brashear was honored with the Secretary of Defense Medal
for Outstanding Public Service in October 2000
for 42 years of combined military and federal
civilian service. The award was presented by
Secretary of Defense William Cohen. On October 24, 2007, the Newport News Fire Department dedicated a 33-foot (10 m) high- speed fireboat named Carl Brashear to be used by their Dive and Marine Incident Response Teams. The Lewis and
Clark -class dry cargo ship USNS Carl Brashear
(T-AKE-7) was christened in his honor in San
Diego, California on September 18, 2008. General
Dynamics delivered the completed ship to the
Navy on March 4, 2009. On February 21, 2009,
Nauticus , a science and maritime museum in
downtown Norfolk, Virginia, opened a new
exhibit called "Dream to Dive: The Life
of Master Diver Carl Brashear". It
is the first full-scale museum exhibit
dedicated to Brashear.
On Tuesday, February 5, 2013 at 7:34 PM,
his son, Phillip Brashear, chief warrant officer in the U.S. Army,
came to the Naval Surface Warfare Center
Panama City Division to speak of his father
and his own accomplishments during a ceremony
honoring Black History Month. Phillip Brashear
relayed his father’s message to the group. “First, everybody has to work. That is
something a lot of young people need to learn,” said Phillip Brashear. “The second thing you need is an education.
Education never stops. I didn’t
get my bachelor’s degree until I was 38 years
old.” The third thing was God. “You have to believe in a higher power,” he said.
Sources: www.wikipedia.org; www.chasingthefrog.com
Hmm! How inspiring. Well, I'll never advise you to divorce your wives for any reason except that which the word gives. And even at that, love still compels us to forgive.
This little biography challenged and inspired me, I hope it inspired you too?
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