Page 59 - Senior Link Magazine Winter 2024 - Online Magazine

EXCEPTIONAL SENIORS

His first out-of-country project was
in Ravenna, Italy on the Adriatic
Sea. His team was there to do a
demonstration. The company put
them up in a brand-new luxury
resort hotel on Lake Como. “We
were there three weeks, but we
only worked three days. The highly
unionized offshore industry would
not permit work until the sea waves
were under four feet, and that took
some time,” Paul recalled.

Paul did a couple of jobs in “I just had to shove them out of the way.” Sometimes
Venezuela. He worked at Lake Maracaibo, not far from a few sharks would come alongside. “They were not a
the Caribbean Sea. By then he was a seasoned supervisor. problem either, but we had to watch the hammerhead.
“I still see a couple of those guys. You form bonds with He wasn’t aggressive, but his head could get caught in
people you risk your life with and share small quarters your oxygen line and pull you up.”
together.”
“I was most comfortable in the water. I had lots of
The team was called to Esmeraldas, Ecuador, to a resort confidence, and it was not scary to me. For six years, I
on the beach, for an inspection job and some close-up was gone on diving assignments 250 days a year.” He
photography. Then Paul was called to Scotland; he had looked across Papa’s living room, and his voice grew soft
to go straight from the tropics–shorts and tank tops to and husky. “Those days really were the closest to God I
heavy winter gear. At Fort Williams in Loch Liinhe, he have ever been. It always felt like a hug from God.”
worked with the Saturation Diving School, diving to the
depth and staying at depth for thirty days. They had Paul now lives in the home that our granddad built 100
to break the ice to get into the water, but “the beauty of years ago in the Happy Union area of Hale County. He
those places was breathtaking.” quit the diving/welding vocation when his company
sold. He found welding jobs on land, partnered in a
One summer in London found them in the North Sea to welding fabrication business in Houston for some years,
repair an underwater structure. Their transport was an then became an aircraft maintenance and inspection
inflatable boat called a Zodiac. To board the platform, the supervisor for corporate aircraft in Dallas and Houston
Zodiac driver perfectly timed a seventy-five-foot wave before moving back to the Plainview area nearly twenty
cresting at the landing with only a second or two for years ago. Here, in different seasons, he has revisited his
them to disembark with their gear. roots of driving tractors and making welding repairs and
fabrications for our tenant farmers. He has redeemed the
Another research job at Aberdeen, Scotland, took place
at 500 feet, in a research facility that had chambers. The old home place by making it an Eden of sorts, where God
dive, a qualifying procedure for a robot welder, was can still hug him, and us, a long way from the depths of
done under a welding chamber of pure Argon which the sea.
could not be breathed. That made Paul a little nervous
because he had very little time to bail out, which he had
to do twice.

His favorite experience occurred while he was welding
with his hand in a fiberglass box. Four or five barracuda
gathered beside him, fascinated by the arc. He laughed,

Original article published in Tell Me a Story, along with One
More Story by Jody Boudreaux Wilson available at Amazon

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