2009 F.O.UWSS Reunion FL

Robert Bornmann
via docrio45  [at] gmail  DOT com 

to NmccJeanaAquad., NMCharlie, NMJim, NMJan, NMAndré In the summer of 1954 Charles Aquadro and two other graduates, Eugene Mayberry and Henry Long, of the University of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis were ordered to Navy duty under instruction at the Naval School, Deep Sea Divers, in the Washington DC Navy Yard. Although contemporaries and acquaintances they were not , because of the Tennessee practice of running classes on a quarter system, strictly classmates. At DSDS their mentor and intructor was Ed Lanphier from the Navy Experimental Diving Unit. Assignments after training were: Aquadro to Underwater Demolition Unit One in San Diego [comprised of UDT-11, -12 and -13], Mayberry to UDT-21 in Norfolk, and Long to the Salvage School in Bayonne NJ. 

After his tour of Navy service Henry Long went into private practice in Tennessee. Eugene Mayberry entered a residency in Internal Medicine at the Mayo Clinic and stayed on there afterwards, rising to CEO of the Clinic before his retirement a few years ago. Charlie Aquadro went on to a varied career in the Navy, then worked with Jacques Cousteau in Monaco, and with TAP Pryor in Honolulu before entering private practice in North Carolina. Charlie always viewed Lanphier as his mentor. He tele-phoned regularly to discuss diving subjects and problems. Whenever Aquadro was in DC or later Buffalo he would drop by Ed’s lab to continue these conversations face-to-face. 

Ed Lanphier was the perfect guide for these young JGs. His knowledge of the field of undersea medicine was extensive, his energy and enthusiasm were infectious, and the three were for him a training field for the Manual on SCUBA medicine that he was working on – which was ultimately published as part of the Navy Diving Manual. In every phase of his career Ed Lanphier’s intelligence and drive made him stand out. This was true of his early training at the Loyola University college of medicine, his fellowship at Penn, his work while on active duty in the Navy, his years at SUNY Buffalo school of medicine; and that part of his career after he trained for the priest-hood in the Episcopal Church and became professor at the University of Wisconsin. [He told me once that upon entering his seminary he felt, after wandering for many years, that he had at last come back home.] 

Ed’s name, Lanphier, was not French, as I had originally surmised, but Welsh. It comes from a long Welsh place name which begins LLANFAIR, and refers to the Church of St Mary there. In my church hymnal is an Easter song set to an old Welsh melody entitled “Llanfair”. The words begin, “Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!” Ed died in 1999 in Madison WI, and those words express well, I think, how Ed felt about his life. 

Robert C Bornmann

                                                   Gaudeamus Igitur
                                                                     (trans. R. Masciantonio)