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Dan Orr
CEO of DAN
- An Ohio Legend
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Dan
Orr |
Dan Orr was
born in Miami, FL and his grandparents built one of the first homes on
stilts constructed in the Florida Keys. Being around all that water and
having the same basic homing instincts as all divers " at the age of 11
he and his best friend "borrowed" a set of scuba equipment from his
friends house and Dan made his first dive in a canal. The visibility was
dreadful as they walked around the bottom and they knew they were
surrounded by sharks and were going to be eaten any minute " but it
didn?t stop them from doing it as often as they could. And to be honest,
they were lucky to have survived the experience since they never knew if
there was air in the bottle. Dan's family moved to southern Ohio when he
was 13. Even though the diving opportunities appeared to be limited, the
diving bug just would not go away. Dan and his brother Tom took a diving
course from a local diving legend, Ray Tussey (NAUI #007) and |
received
their NAUI certification in the summer
of 1964. This was when open water dives were an optional part of diver
training. Thankfully the diver training taught them to survive
underwater, they checked themselves out!
Dan joined the Navy in 1966 and did a tour of combat duty in Viet Nam
onboard a destroyer (USS Steinaker DD863) assigned to support US and
Republic of Viet Nam forces in and around the DMZ. His duties onboard
ranged from being a swimmer on an aircrew rescue team when operating
with US carrier forces in the Tonkin Gulf to gun mount and fire control
duties during combat operations against the North Vietnamese.
After return from active duty he remained in the US Navy Reserves until
1977 while attending college at Wright State University (WSU) in Dayton,
Ohio. The diving bug got to him again and he volunteered as a pool
assistant for a local instructor, Bill Kessen. In exchange for
volunteering, he was able to take scuba continuing education courses at
virtually no cost. That's when he learned what
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diving
in Ohio was really all about. Ohio was always a very popular location
for divers and had a large and very active council of divers, the Ohio
Council of Skin & Scuba Divers, Incorporated. Dan worked with Bill in
the pool and in his dive store, in West Carrollton, Ohio, Kessen Underwater Specialties for
the next few years as he majored in Biology at WSU. He planned on
eventually becoming a marine biologist so he could combine his love of
diving with his interest in science. One night in late 1971 while he
waited at |
the dive
store for Bill to come from his full-time job at a local factory, Bill's
wife called and said that he had had a heart attack and was pronounced
dead at the local hospital. Dan was devastated. Bill had taught him that
diving was not just about learning to breath underwater, it included a
social component that was just as important.
A few weeks following Bill's death, his widow called and asked Dan if he
was willing to become a scuba instructor and take over running the
classes for the store. Along with another guy who worked at the store,
Gordon Jump, they went to a YMCA Scuba Instructor Institute at the Blue
Ash YMCA in Cincinnati. These were weekend programs and Gordon and Dan
spent the next few months fulfilling requirements for certification as
both YMCA and PADI instructors. Dan taught his first course in the
summer of 1972. From that point on, he knew that not only did he love
diving but he truly loved teaching. During the next few years, Dan
finished his Bachelor's degree and a Master's Degree Program in Aquatic
Biology at Wright State University and taught diving courses for the
dive club at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.
Still in the US Navy
Reserves, he started a diving program for the local Reserve Unit with
the idea that the Navy could use their diving skills on their annual
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active
duty training. As part of that process, Dan was sent to Panama City, Florida to the Navy Coastal System Center (ultimately to become
the Navy Experimental Diving Unit) for training and evaluation as a
Navy-certified diver. Back in Ohio, Dan was doing everything he could
that involved diving. That included testing Navy experimental dry suits
and undergarments for a research firm in Yellow Springs, Ohio to working
on projects in the harbor in Sandusky, Ohio. He became more involved in
the YMCA Scuba Program becoming first the |
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regional
Field Representative and then later the YMCA Scuba Commissioner for the
entire Great Lakes region.
While still in Graduate School at WSU and working as a Graduate Teaching
Assistant in the Biology Department he still worked at the local dive
shop teaching the first scuba classes offered for college credit at
nearby Sinclair Community College. When he heard that Wright State was
going to build a recreation complex that included a swimming pool he
talked with the Aquatics Director about introducing scuba diving at WSU.
The Aquatics Director listened to Dan's idea and said, "That's a great
idea but we already have someone on our staff that could teach scuba
diving."
Dan asked to meet this person and discovered that gentleman was
an aquatics professional who taught swimming, coached the swim team but
had never been diving in his life. He said, "How difficult could it be?"
Dan made a deal with the Director that if he would support his efforts
to start a scuba program that he would co-teach with him once he had
taught him how to dive. He went through one of Dan's courses at Sinclair
and thoroughly enjoyed scuba diving but realized that there was quite a
bit more to scuba diving than he thought. He supported bringing scuba to
Wright State and they met with the WSU Director of Health, Physical
Education and Recreation (HPR) and laid out Dan's ideas and
requirements. Dan took a chance from the very beginning and said that
the University program should provide all the equipment, have their own
compressor and that the program should not be limited to just one
course.
Dan's vision was that the WSU Scuba Program should involve
everything from entry-level up through instructor training. He also
convinced the department that all scuba classes should be offered for
college credit that could fulfill the
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physical education portion of the
general education requirements for all degrees. They agreed and allowed
him to develop the program and all course offerings as he saw fit. The
only requirement they imposed on him was that all course should meet the
basic requirements for certification by a nationally-recognized training
organization. Over the next 15 years, the program developed to include
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entry-level diver (40 hours of training and 6 open water dives),
experienced open water diver (20 hours of instructor and 25 open water
dives), advanced open water diver (40 hours of training and 50 open water
dives), research diver (taught in conjunction with the advanced course),
underwater photographer, underwater archeologist, teaching assistant,
assistant instructor, open water instructor. There were also a variety of
credit and non-credit seminars and specialty courses.
The WSU Underwater
Education Program developed into one of the largest and most
comprehensive diver education program of its time. Virtually every
weekend of the year, WSU divers and students were enjoying the waters of
local dive sites, Sportsman's Lake (Cedarville), Portage Quarry (Bowling
Green), White Star Park (Gibsonville), George's Livery (Springfield),
France Park (New Paris), as well as dive sites in Indiana, Michigan,
Kentucky, Florida, and Ontario. The waters were crystal clear or no
visibility, air temperatures between 110o in the shade (and there was
none) to so cold your lips would freeze to a water bottle " just not all
on the same day. On one set of check out weekends the lake froze over
night and the group drove 6 hours south to another quarry to finish off
the weekend. It was still cold there so they built a bonfire to stay
warm. It worked except that the students stood so close to the fire in
their rented wetsuits that they melted the neoprene at the knees!!
In the early 1980's Dan began to do talks on the local speaking circuit.
At that time Dan met Dr. Peter Bennett who was also doing a
presentation. Dan's talk was on accident management and emergency
assistance planning using his own style of visual aids in the slide
show. Instead of using a standard first aid kit to manage a diving
accident he demonstrated that divers could use what they had available
(their equipment) to stabilize an injured diver. It was effective, but
managed to look like an S&M how to for the neoprene set! Dr. Bennett
asked Dan if he could mention DAN. He told him name was already on the
title slide. He said, "No, I mean the newly formed Diving Accident
Network - DAN!" As a result of that meeting, Dan became one of DAN's
first members (member #10) and was asked to be the local volunteer field
representative promoting DAN to the local diving community. It was one
of the easiest things he would ever do!
Wright State was going through an evolution in the 80's that included
re-assessment of all programs within the HPR Department. The idea was to
eliminate many of the purely recreational courses in order to put more
money into competitive athletics. Dan convinced the administration to
preserve the scuba program as long as they were able to generate all of
their own funding. As you know, scuba training is a very expensive
endeavor with little hope of generating sufficient revenue to cover all
the costs. While on his annual Christmas Holiday visit to many of the
dive stores throughout Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Michigan, he noticed
that all the stores were trying desperately to sell off last year's
equipment in anticipation of new equipment the next year. This gave Dan
an idea. Why not bring all the stores together so they could sell their
equipment and invite divers from everywhere to take advantage of these
deals. They could offer the venue (charging a nominal fee for floor
space) and give these stores the opportunity to donate equipment to the
WSU Underwater Education Program that didn't sell. It seemed like a sure
?win-win" for everyone. The WSU Scuba Flea Market worked from the
beginning! The first year, there were thousands of divers (one group
even chartered a flight from Atlanta to be there) who bought just about
everything the participating stores brought. What they didn't sell, they
donated to the diving program to help keep it going for another year.
Each year it got better and larger with some stores bringing
semi-truckloads of equipment for sale. Sellers and buyers alike would
camp out in the parking lots vying for the best space and the hottest
deals. There were a few dive stores that told Dan that they would not
have survived those tough economic times if the Flea Market had not been
there. Dan added educational seminars and pool demonstrations as the WSU
Scuba Flea Market and Diver Exchange continued to grow. At the same
time, Dan was asked by Dr. Lee Somers to be on the Instructor Training
Staff during NAUI Instructor Workshops that took place each summer at
the University of Michigan. That led Dan to more involvement with NAUI
becoming a NAUI Course Director followed by assuming the role of NAUI
Branch Manager for the Mid-America Region and then the founding Chairman
of the NAUI Technical Advisory Group.
All this lasted until 1988 when WSU finally decided that recreational
programs, even those as popular as scuba diving, had to make way for
competitive athletics that meant big dollars for the University. At that
point, Dan decided that it was time to move on. When he left WSU, he had
a volunteer instructional staff of nearly 50 people! (20 certified scuba
instructors, 10 assistant instructors, 10 teaching assistants and 10
surface support staff).
Following a presentation Dan gave at the DEMA Show on college-level
diving programs, he was offered a position as the Associate Diving
Safety Officer and Instructional Coordinator with the Academic Diving
Program at Florida State University. During his tenure at FSU, he became
heavily involved in cave and research diving, received a Nitrox
instructor certification (IANTD #10) and taught mixed gas diving to
science divers at FSU. While at FSU, he did work with Disney's Living
Seas Pavilion at EPCOT.
In 1990, Dan decided that there were other things he wanted to try in
diving and was interviewing for positions as the diving supervisor at
the Living Seas or the assistant operations director for the NOAA
Undersea Research Center in Wilmington, NC when he found out that Divers
Alert Network was going to start a training program. He talked with the
folks at DAN and was hired as DAN's first Director of Training. His
first job was to develop and implement the DAN Oxygen First Aid for
Diving Injuries course, the first oxygen first aid course for divers
that was recognized across the diving world. His career at DAN continued
to progress from training to operations then to chief operating officer
and, ultimately, president and CEO.
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