By JACK DORSEY AND JIM WASHINGTON, The Virginian-Pilot © July 26, 2006 Last updated 8:06 AM Jul. 26
PORTSMOUTH — Retired Master Chief Carl Maxie Brashear, the Navy’s first black deep sea diver, whose refusal to quit despite racism and grueling physical trauma inspired the movie “Men of Honor,” died Tuesday of heart and respiratory failure at the Portsmouth Naval Medical Center. He was 75.
It’s the same hospital where he recovered from a shipboard accident in 1966 that cost him his leg. And it’s where doctors, who took a personal interest in Brashear’s resolve, fitted him with an artificial leg and designed an exercise program that allowed him to return to diving for the Navy. He was the first amputee in naval history to be restored to active duty.
Brashear’s son Phillip took emergency leave from his duties as a U.S. Army helicopter pilot serving in Iraq to be with his father at the end.
“I would say he was a great educator,” Phillip Brashear said Tuesday. “Just by the way he lived his dreams he was an example, and maybe he changed some viewpoints for the better.”
Phillip said his father never thought of himself as a hero.
“He was a humble man,” he said. “He just thought that he did what he wanted to do and never let anyone stand in his way.”
Brashear had four children. The family had not finalized funeral arrangements Tuesday.
In 2000, actor Cuba Gooding Jr. portrayed Carl Brashear’s struggles onscreen in “Men of Honor.” “He is the strongest man I have ever met,” Gooding said. “He really was a pioneer, and his accomplishments continue to impact today’s sailors,” said Master Chief Petty Officer Kent Robarts, a master diver at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
Born in Kentucky in 1931, Brashear joined the Navy in 1948 at the age of 17. For years, he endured daily struggles with racism in a recently desegregated military to become the first black diver in Navy history in 1953. On March 23, 1966, the salvage ship Hoist was attempting to recover a nuclear bomb lost off the coast of Spain after a collision between two Air Force planes, according to news accounts. Brashear was aboard when a stern mooring line of a landing craft pulled a steel pipe out of the salvage ship’s deck. As the pipe flew across the deck Brashear pushed another sailor out of the way, but the pipe struck Brashear’s left leg.
Doctors at an Air Force hospital in Madrid attempted to save the leg, as did doctors in Germany. When he arrived at the Portsmouth hospital in May 1966, an infection had grown worse. Doctors gave Brashear the option of fixing the leg with pins and braces, which would take years.
According to a 1989 interview published by the U.S. Naval Institute, Brashear refused the treatment and asked instead that the leg be amputated. “I can’t be tied that long,” he is quoted as saying in the interview. “I’ve got to go back to diving. They just laughed. 'The fool’s crazy. He doesn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell of staying in the Navy. And a diver? No way! Impossible!’ ”
Rear Adm. Joseph L. Yon, then commandant of the Portsmouth facility, took a personal interest in Brashear and worked out an exercise program for him. Brashear, fitted with an artificial leg, had to walk up and down a flight of stairs with 114 pounds strapped on his back to simulate scuba tanks. Yon was impressed and recommended Brashear remain on active duty. Brashear first had to convince the Bureau of Medicine in Washington, which he did, diving every day for five days in simulated depths of more than 200 feet.
In spring 1967, he returned to active duty and became executive officer of the Navy’s diving school barge. He advanced to the rank of master chief petty officer and became the Navy’s first black master diver. He retired in 1979.
Brashear was awarded the Navy-Marine Corps Medal for heroism for shoving the sailor out of the way of the pipe aboard the Hoist – one of almost a dozen decorations and medals he received in his career.
Work began on the “Men of Honor” movie in 1998. Originally titled “Navy Diver,” it was heralded at the Toronto Film Festival, where it received a standing ovation, and at the White House, where Brashear watched with President Clinton and his staff.
After his retirement, Brashear lived in Virginia Beach and became a pen pal to numerous amputees, some of whom would write or call him seeking solace.
His advice to them was simple: The limbless need not be listless .
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
