Tri - 4- Paul

Tri4Paul

www.tri4paul.webs.com

It was June14^th 2002.  I was just finishing almost 2 weeks of prerequisite dive courses in Ft. Collins, Colorado so I could attend a Public Safety Scuba Instructor course that was set for early winter.  As I returned to my hotel room, I was exhausted and ready for some rest.  The phone rang and as I answered I heard my buddy back at the firehouse in Indianapolis exclaiming “They lost another one!”  Confused, I asked “Who lost another one?” He said he was watching the news as the Indianapolis Fire Department was searching for one of their safety divers.  Something had happened during a training dive, the diver had disappeared underwater and they hadn’t found him yet.  This was hard to hear because this same fire department had lost another diver in training less than two years earlier. 

My mind suddenly cleared and I remembered I had a very close friend in this class.  No sooner had I registered this when my friend asked if I knew a Paul Jolliff.  The missing diver was my friend, Paul.  Paul, who had a two year son and a wife just a couple of months away from giving birth to their second child, a daughter.  Paul, who had helped save my life. 

In 1997, I was new to the fire service and just two years into my marriage.  The fire department job was going well, we had just purchased our first house and things were looking great on the outside.  On the inside however, I was well into my life as a functioning alcoholic (aka liar, cheater and addict).  I was killing not only my marriage but myself. 

When I hit bottom, I finally decided to get help.  Paul Jolliff, a fellow firefighter and his wife Wendy were among the first people I met.  Paul was a stranger to me, but he offered to help, took me under his wing and became my friend.  Since I really didn’tt know how to live life on life’s terms without alcohol, he had to walk with me until I could start to walk on my own.  He sacrificed much of his own time and made sure I was staying active in my own recovery.

Some of my favorite memories of Paul were the times he would volunteer me for service work (required for my ongoing recovery) and not tell me until after he scheduled them!  I would have to drive some pretty far distances to get to some of these places and would think along the way that he probably volunteered me just so he wouldn’t have to go. But this was far from the truth.  Paul had a very busy volunteer life himself and to this day I am not even sure if I still know all the organizations with whom he worked.

As I got to know Paul better, I was surprised to find out that he usually rode his bike to get to the fire department or to one of his volunteer jobs!  He was also an avid runner and was attempting to run a marathon in all 50 states.  I used to laugh because he was also a weight lifter and was very stocky, not built like your typical runner.  He admitted he was not built for speed but still enjoyed competing and finishing.  

After my first year of sobriety, my head was starting to clear (a little) and I was blessed to be hired with a township fire department that was looking very progressive.  I was already a recreational scuba instructor and this department wanted to start a dive team.  Therefore, part of my job was to assist with the formation of this program.  Now at the time, there was a big ego wall up between the city and township fire departments.  Because the city’s instructors were certified by NAUI, our chief advised me to become a NAUI instructor even though I was already certified by PADI so our team would be more respected by the city.  I advised the chief that we would benefit more from some job training that would be specific to safety divers as extensive training in this area wasn’t offered by either NAUI or PADI.  However he was adamant that I just do the crossover training.  I am being brutally honest when I say in the beginning we had no job specific training except what I could glean from others in the profession and from the internet.  We were very fortunate that we did not have any serious incidents of our own, but we did have some “close calls” or “near misses” as we call them today.

A few years into the existence of our dive program, the city fire department had their first line of duty death in a dive training accident.  JC Smith was about 70 feet underwater serving as the pivot man holding the rope for a circle search pattern.  Something went wrong and during the final moments as he attempted to surface he got caught in the descent line and the line he had in the water.  The surface support crew finally pulled him out but he later died in the hospital.  This tragedy was the catalyst I needed to persuade my chief that job specific training was essential and was sent to Ft. Collins to become a Public Safety Scuba Instructor.  

By the grace of God, Paul, and a fellowship of supportive people who took time to love and listen, I now had several years of sobriety under my belt.  I was well underway in putting my life and relationship back together.  Paul and I no longer saw each other as often as I was able to stand well on my own, but we remained friends.  I was able celebrate with Paul as he welcomed his son into this world and he was able to share my joy in the birth of my own son.  

I was about seven years into my sobriety when I left for Ft. Collins.  Paul had recently called and left a message about the two of us possibly making a recreational dive in the near future as he was just about finished with his dive class for the city fire department.  It was during Paul’s last training dive when things went terribly wrong.  

Paul and his partner were two divers in a class of ten that were performing their last dive of the day.  Their objective was to descend a buoy line, perform a search pattern, tie off to a cement block with a rope and plastic bucket, then using tank air fill the bucket with air and lift it to the surface.  There were ten total students in the water at the same time in groups of two spread out around the lake.  The students were not tethered or tendered and had no communications except for using the pivot line for rope signals.  Together, the students were to drop down at a buoy line and descend to the bottom.  One diver served as the pivot man and the other was the search diver.  The pivot man held a rope bag and when the search diver completed a full pattern, the pivot diver would let out more line. Each diver also had another small section of rope with a shackle on it that was tucked in their buoyancy compensator.  After the search diver located the block, he would signal the pivot man who would swim and meet the search diver where they would both tie off to the block with the short section of rope.  Then using their tank air, they would fill the bucket and lift the block to the surface.

On this day, Paul was the search diver and had signaled his buddy that he had found the block.  The two met up and at somewhere between 40 and 60 feet of water with zero visibility they tied off to the bucket.  Investigators figure it was during this time that Paul had an out of air situation.  Paul’s buddy felt a weight belt drop over his lap and a hand briefly grab at the side of his mask.  At this point, his buddy decided to surface and get help.  The one safety diver in a boat with standard scuba for ten divers was alerted and deployed.  Since JC Smith had become entangled in the buoy lines during his incident, it was decided to pull the buoy lines in this situation as well.  Unfortunately, Paul was not entangled in the lines and the last scene point was now compromised. After desperate repeated searches, it wasn’t until hours later that Paul’s body was found.  It was later discovered that Paul had accidentally tied his short section of rope in such a way that it had become attached to his BC.  He never made it to the surface.

Today the dive teams of the city of Indianapolis and the surrounding counties all dive the same system. We train together, have automatic mutual aide agreements, and many other safety procedures and SOPs have been put into place.  We now enjoy the camaraderie we should have had as public safety professionals in the beginning before we lost two of our own.  

Two years ago I was thinking about a conversation Paul and I had.  Paul had always wanted me to run with him but I never would.  When he told me about the Great Floridian iron-distance triathlon that he had completed (a 2.4 mile swim, 112mile bike and a 26.2 mile run), I told him he was crazy!  It was after remembering this talk that I decided to run in his shoes, and I started to train and run in shorter triathlons.  Last year in 2007, I was able to complete the Great Floridian in his name.  People now call me crazy!

Paul had also wanted to run in a sanctioned Ironman event but he never got the chance.  I felt the tug on my heart to finish what he had started and am now signed up for the Ironman event in Louisville, KY in August 2008.  However, I also wanted my competing in this race to have a positive impact on the dive community.  I asked Wendy, his wife, if she would mind if I did a fundraiser in Paul’s name for the International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists (IADRS).  She said, quote, “I would rather someone celebrate Paul’s life and what he loved to do, I may shed tears reading about it but not because it’s bad. The only thing that was bad is that he died.”  Today I am training to compete for Paul in August and am raising money for the IADRS to support their mission in providing up-to-date information, training and an annual conference where public safety divers can meet and network so they won’t have to pay the same high price we did. 

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