Trailblazer: The Extraordinary Life of Diving Pioneer Dottie Frazier

by Dottie Frazier, Karen Straus (Editor), Bonnie Toth (Designed by)

Overview

Dorothy Adell Reider Gath Frazier May. Her name is longer and weighs more than she does, standing barely five feet tall and 100 pounds dripping wet. And dripping with water is how Dottie has spent much of her remarkably adventurous and long life.

What is amazing about Dottie is not just WHAT she did, but WHEN she did it: Ocean swimming and boating as a child in the 1920s, as well as surfing, skin diving and spearfishing. In the 30s she was a skin-diving instructor. In the 1940s she was a 'Rosie the Riveter' during the war years and a commercial fisher to help feed her growing family. In 1950 she was a charter member of the famed Long Beach Neptunes dive club. And in 1955, she became the world's first certified female scuba instructor. She was also a hard-hat diver and was the first female dive shop owner and wetsuit manufacturer.

Dottie tells her extraordinary life story in her own words, bringing to life her early childhood in Long Beach, California, where she was raised as the son her father never had, to being honored in 2019, at the age of 97, with the Historical Diving Society Diving Pioneer Award.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578551982
Publisher:	Bonnie Toth Advertising & Design
Publication date:	09/28/2019
Pages:	114
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 11.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Karen Straus was born in Southern California and grew up in Nairobi, Kenya. She started diving in 1968 after taking a scuba certification course in college. She was among the first handful of women certified as scuba instructors, earning her Los Angeles County instructor certification in 1970. For many years she taught swimming, life-saving, and skin and scuba diving in Orange County, California. She also began writing about and photographing marine life for dive magazines and books. She spent the next 20 years in Montana, Maine, Chicago and New York working as a newspaper reporter and photographer, a food writer and editor, and a writer and field producer for underwater and nature television programming. Karen is a long-time officer of the San Diego Underwater Film Exhibition. She was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2011. In 2017 she was the co-author of Immersion: 75 Years of Adventure and Discovery, about the invention of the Aqua Lung regulator. In 2018 she was a contributor to Ocean Metaphor, Unexpected Life Lessons From the Ocean. She is a contributing editor to Dive Training magazine.

A California native and scuba diver since 1978, Bonnie Toth is creative director and owner of Bonnie Toth Advertising & Design in San Clemente, CA. For more than 35 years, she has shared her passion and creativity elevating the marketing world through outstanding visual communications and advancing exploration of the undersea world through her deep commitment to diving and leadership in the industry. Bonnie served on the Board of Directors of the Women Divers Hall of Fame for 14 year and is currently the Graphics and Website Coordinator. Bonnie is the Managing Editor for The Journal of Diving History and was the designer of Aqua Lung's coffee table book, Immersion: 75 Years of Adventure and Discovery. Bonnie was inducted into the Women Divers Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2014, she received the Historical Diving Society E.R. Cross Award for Distinguished Service and the BTS Diver of the Year for Distinguished Service. Bonnie also received the prestigious Academy of Underwater Arts & Sciences NOGI for Distinguished Service in 2016.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Blazing a Trail 5

By Bonnie Toth and Karen Straus

In My Own Words 7

By Dottie Frazier

Early Long Beach 9

The Beginning 11

The Pacific was My Playground 13

Becoming my Father’s ‘Son’ 15

Divorce and a Rescue 16

My Grandparents 17

Earthquake! 18

Tent City and The Pike 20

Scouting 21

The Y 23

My Musical Mother 24

Swims with My Snake 26

Terry the Tarantula 27

Milking Rattlesnakes 28

Snow and Water Skiing 29

Springboard Diver 30

School Days 31

Boat Life 33

The Serenity of Sailing 35

Birthday Boat 36

Life Aboard a Cruiser 37

My First Boat Jobs 38

‘One of the Boys’ on a Fishing Boat 39

Storm at Sea 42

Catalina Island 45

The Magic of Catalina Island 47

Close Call in a Cave 48

Island Meals 49

Hunting Abalone 50

Shark Rodeo 51

Exploring Wrecks 51

SKIN DIVING 53

My First Dive 54

From Look Box to Double Arbalete 55

Diving for Coins 56

Diving Derbies 57

Look Before You Leap 58

Robbed by a Seal 59

MARRIAGE AND KIDS 61

The War Years 63

Building a New Life 64

A Second Marriage 64

Family Diving 65

LIFE WITH CYRIL 69

Looking for Surf and Finding a Husband 70

Our Days in San Blas 73

Dredging for Gold 75

My Love Affair with Harleys 77

THE SCUBA YEARS 79

Scuba Training 81

D. Frazier, Scuba Instructor 82

Nitrogen Narcosis 85

My Big Lobster 87

Aboard the Sea Chase 89

Face to Face with a Great White 90

Photo Galleries 93-99

Dottie Stories 101

A Feisty Gal 103

By Keith Chase

Happiness is a Coatimundi 104

By Cyril May

Adventure is Her Middle Name 106

By Eric Hanauer

Diving with Dottie 109

By Barbara Allen

My Firecracker Grandmother 111

By Jenna Frazier

Sidebars

Early Long Beach Timeline 10

Compiled by Dottie Frazier

Water Sprite 32

Dottie’s Firsts, Honors and Achievements 84

Training and Accomplishments 92

Compiled by Dottie Frazier

Acknowledgements 112