East Atlanta
Free Divers
Back in the early 1960's
a group of guys formed a rather informal "club" called the East Atlanta Free Divers. These guys were some of the
early pioneers o spear fishing.
The "club" was formed because to enter the early tournaments, a
group had to be a "club". Richard Gassaway, Bill Carman and Ned
Harris, were the founders of the club. They had been friends for years and had
been shooting together quite a while. They needed another shooter and recruited
Al Franklin who was just a kid at the time ( they
found out about Al since his mother worked with Richard and Bill at the Georgia
Department of Public Health ). Al brought along his friend and fellow shooter,
David Taylor. These five guys made up the East Atlanta
Free Divers.
The
team entered spear fishing tournaments in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina,
Tennessee, and Kentucky. They won almost every tournament as a team and Richard
Gassaway usually won top individual honors. He was a very impressive shooter (
to quote Al Franklin, a pretty good shooter himself, "Richard was simply
the best of the best at shooting, second place was never in the hunt ). He
could free dive to 100' and take several fish and surface".
They were Georgia State Champions, Southeastern US Champions, and Southern
Champions as a team of shooters.
They were an offshoot of the Georgia State Sea Devils, which included Billy
Kalb and John Pat Garner. John Pat was capturing alligators for a living in
Florida the last we heard. That Sea Devil team won the Southeast Spearfishing
Tournament in 1961 at Morrison Springs ( FL ), capturing 1st place team and 1st
place individual (Richard Gassaway, of course).
An observer remembers: "I remember a time when these guys almost got
shot at a meet in Tennessee, at the Arnold Center (Air Force) contest. Everyone
except East Atlanta was diving in the clear water of the lake, and EAFD won the
meet going away with a boatload of carp taken from the muddy water of the
river. Nobody believed that was possible, and the East Atlanta team was accused
of cheating, until they did the same thing the next day.........".
This was typical of this group of shooters.
This
group also joined the Southern Council of Skin Diving Clubs. Al and David
entered the annual competitions of the group ( speed swims, free diving
competitions, navigation, etc. ) and won every one of them. Al became a Vice
President of the Council.
All of the team is out of diving today except Al Franklin, who continues to
enjoy spear fishing even though he is retired from competition. He has passed
the love of the activity along to his son Captain Trip
Franklin, who carries the torch today. Trip is quite the shooter.