About the Annual Short Story Contest

His story reads like an adventure novel, but T. D. Vinette of Escanaba allows no literary license in the telling. That's why he chose to put it in his own words.
  Better known perhaps for the hundreds of steel and aluminum-hulled vessels he has built in his North Escanaba boatyard, Dale Vinette began recording his reminiscences in the early 1990s as a labor of love, to share his past with his children.
  Last year, that series of letters to them about his far-flung assignments as a commercial and Navy diver from 1934 to 1945 became Deep Water Man, a 134-page self-published, self-illustrated book.
  The saga of those Depression and war years in the Delta County native's early life shows he's always been right at home on the water, never far from his roots. He was born in Nahma where his father had operated a marine dredge for the Bay de Noc Lumber Co.; during World War I, the family moved to Escanaba where Edward Vinette ran a general repair and welding shop to support his wife and five children.
  In 1934, a Popular Mechanics article on making a diving helmet from a 40-gallon galvanized hot water tank inspired young Dale, an Eagle Scout, to dream of recovering scrap iron from the bottom of Little Bay de Noc. Realizing that dream not only put cash in his pocket during the money-tight Depression but launched a fulfilling career of underwater exploits throughout North and South America and across two oceans and stood him in good stead financially for years.
  "You should like the business you're in and hope to make a buck at it," he says."That's how it's been with me."
  Not long after his first diving experience, he entered the American Nautical Academy in Washington, D.C., beginning a life-long connection with the maritime industry, and was licensed to work aboard vessels on the Great Lakes and Atlantic coast.
  Among his early underwater experiences, he dove for—but never located—a cargo of Civil War-era gold rumored lost near Poverty Island between Lake Michigan and Green Bay. Later, he plunged into the frigid waters of Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territory to complete emergency repairs on a commercial gold mining dredge. Both jobs made the young diver ready cash and a name in diving circles.
  Between 1936 and 1942, he worked in the Great Lakes region, in Florida, Montana, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania and even in Mexico, repairing dams and dredges, doing marine salvage, serving aboard Great Lakes ferries and tugs and polishing his skills and reputation.
  But it was the war years and his service in the U.S. Navy that were to test those skills and bring him something more than money in his pocket. The service added to his training, sending him to the Navy Salvage School in New York and the Navy's Deep Sea Diving School in Washington, where he qualified as a Master Diver after only ten days.
  His book reserves a page in full color for sixteen citations and medals—including the Navy Cross for extraordinary heroism and Silver and Bronze Stars for gallant service. The awards are displayed prominently in his office at the T. D. Vinette Boatworks, along with his Eagle Scout citation.
  "I'd say I'm most pleased with the submarine rescue job, although it took me a longtime to realize it," he says now of the underwater mission that won him the Navy Cross.
  "Pleased" is an understatement. In June, 1945, thirty-three American servicemen had been trapped aboard the submarine USS Pickerel, grounded on a Pacific reef 320 feet below the surface 200 miles south of Japan, and had been submerged for six days when Navy Chief Warrant Officer Dale Vinette arrived aboard a submarine rescue tug. As the only Master Diver on site, he made the initial dive to survey damage and to prepare the sub's hatch for use of the McCann Rescue Bell to bring out its crew. It took the diving team twenty-eight hours and eight descents of the bell to rescue the men.
  That memory and other events that won him additional Navy honors ultimately led to Vinette's book project. The missions were diverse, dangerous and memorable: underwater demolition in the dark of night to clear enemy harbor obstructions and pave the way for an Allied invasion of North Africa; removing magnetic mines from ships and the harbor in Bermuda; recovering bodies from an exploded ship at Hawaii; standby underwater duty during off-loading of atomic bombs at Tinnian Island in summer, 1945, and being trapped for twenty-two hours under a ship during salvage operations at Guam.
  Those memories returned to him in his sleep nearly fifty years after the events, and his nocturnal ramblings caught the attention of his wife, Ruthie, whom he'd married in 1971 following the death of his first wife, Jan. She urged that he record them for his four children—Joan Vinette and Mary Vinette of Marquette, Ann Rutkowski of West Bend, WI, and Tom of Suttons Bay—and her three sons—Chris, Jeff and Dan Branson—whom he'd helped raise.
  After publication of his book, family and friends encouraged him to begin a volume on other aspects of his life since he opened the boatyard in 1947. There is ample material for another book—about changes he's seen in the marine industry...about hundreds of twenty-five- to one hundred-foot boats he's designed and built for private individuals and firms and federal and state agencies...about the seventy-two-foot tourist boat that was taken in pieces to the Tahquamenon River on an ice road and reassembled there for service....
  He admits enjoying the process of telling the stories of his past and is having "too much fun" to retire.
  "I've had lots of fun," he says of the writing project. "I may do it this winter," writing and re-writing with a laptop computer as he did in the past when he and Ruthie spent time with friends in Mexico.
  With six years' writing and preparation of the manuscript behind him and a routine that puts him in the boatyard office five hours daily (he's given over day-to-day boat yard operations to son Dan Branson), he's still found time to pursue another of his interests—art.
  "Artwork is part of my life," he says. "I enjoy it." It's an interest he shares with Ruthie, who is a watercolor artist.
  From his experience designing and building steel and aluminum boats, it wasn't a stretch to go to metal sculpture and enamel work. He makes "heraldic shields" (coat-of-arms) for friends, liturgical pieces and has created a large enameled bronze map of Delta County for the county building's exterior. Of late, he's been working on a smaller scale—miniature metal sculptures, enamel-copper jewelry and enamel-stainless steel holiday decorations. He also has begun to carve soapstone and alabaster into detailed pieces. Many of them go to family and friends as "an expression of warmth and caring," he says.
  From his office overlooking Escanaba's ore docks, he speaks highly of the skilled captains who guide commercial vessels on the lakes, noting that it's a well-paid profession for nine months' service each year. And, he's always ready to help mentor and guide youngsters who, like a certain Eagle Scout sixty-five years ago, venture out for a career on the water. If they're as fortunate as Dale Vinette, they'll have tales to tell their children and grandchildren some day, too.
—Nancy Mathews

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