Gardner Dutton Young
unknown - unknown
Gardner Dutton Young
Man of Action, Man of Words
June 3, 1929 – September 16, 2018
Born in 1929 in Port Clinton, Ohio where his father served as a member of the US Coast Guard, he and his mother moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts when his father died a year later chasing rum runners on Lake Erie. Growing up during the Depression and World War II ingrained in Gardner a tough resilience. He joined the Marine Corps at a young age. This enabled him to take advantage of the G.I. bill to earn a degree in Public Relations, cum laude, from Boston University.
Heading for the Florida coast and a new start, Gardner worked as a lifeguard, bought a boat and landed in the Bahamas some time later. Dive instructor, commercial diver, speed boat racer and starting two businesses – Underwater Tours and Underwater Engineering – put Gardner in his element… the sea.
The warm, blue waters of the Bahamas became Gardner’s playground and work place. Not only was he the only diver holding an underwater demolition license in the country, he was also a PADI Master Instructor who taught the specialists how to dive.
Gardner instructed the Bahamas Police and Defense Forces; worked on oil rigs for Tenaco; conducted pipeline surveys for Esso, Texaco and Shell; worked with four Navy units from around the world; laid cables, salvaged wrecks, fixed cruise liners and spent six years as a reserve Civilian diver for the US Navy.
Gardner considered the ‘Resort Course’ which he pioneered – teaching non-diving enthusiastic holiday makers the basics on day one in the hotel swimming pool and diving on the reefs around the island on day two - his most important contribution to the world sport of diving. It opened the sport to thousands over the years, and for the twenty years that he ran the courses no diving accident ever occurred.
He shared his love of the sport and the sea with film stars like Gary Cooper, Michael Landon and Sean Connery; cameramen like Lamar Boren, Jordan Klein and Chuck Nicklin; men of the sea like Phillipe Cousteau; politicians like the Kennedys; and pop idols like the Beatles, Kenny Rogers and Burl Ives.
Gardner Dutton Young is an official Diving Legend. He has been inducted into the Scuba Diving Hall of Fame and has been the subject of many renowned journals of the sea. He left this earth as he lived – his way. He will missed and thought of fondly by his lifelong friend Frances Doyle and a host of other friends in the Bahamas and around the world.
