Interviewer(s): D. Austin. Irving, TX

Affiliation: University of Arizona

I met George Taylor at the 2002 Divers' Reunion. He became very interested in the study and told me that he had wanted to put together a history of the diving industry. We talked for quite some time and agreed that I would come to Irving at some point to interview him. I drove to Louisiana for the July field session so that I could stop at several places in Texas on the way back. I called George, and he arranged a room at the Irving Public Library where we could meet. He brought along his friend, Pete Petrisky, a former Marine Corps diver and photographer.

George Taylor began diving inadvertently in the Navy when he was sent underwater to pull three bodies out of the U.S.S. Morris after the Battle of Okinawa. After returning to the states, he enrolled in the Navy's Deep Sea Diving School and spent the next 14 years as a Navy diver. Upon retirement from the Navy he headed to the Gulf coast to find a job in the oilfield. He started with Taylor Diving in 1960 but never could adjust to the vast differences in safety consciousness between the Navy and the Gulf of Mexico oilfield. He did freelance diving for many years, tried to start an organization of divers, and became co-chairman of the safety committee of the Marine Technology Society. He faced significant resistance and even hostility in the Gulf and eventually moved to southern California, where he joined the Pile Drivers Union and worked for companies operating out of there until his retirement from diving in the 1970s.