UPDATED WITH STORY: Plan for oilfield divers granite monument unveiled

Jim Roberson of Shalimar, Florida, was among the men who came Saturday to Morgan City to see plans for a new oilfield divers monument. Roberson carried his own reminder of his days as a diver: the cane he uses to walk.
Roberson and other veterans of what was a pioneering segment of the energy industry were here for the first Morgan City Oilfield Divers Rally. They swapped stories about their days of economically vital but sometimes dangerous work, memorialized at Morgan City’s Monument Park near Municipal Auditorium.
“You see guys who you worked with 30 and 40 years ago,” Roberson said, “old sea stories about working in Brazil, Abu Dhabi and Dubai.”
Roberson is writing a book about commercial diving, a field he entered in 1975.
His father was a Navy diver. Roberson, now 67, began scuba diving in 1966 and later underwent commercial dive training. He went to work as a diver in 1975.
He worked for Martech International, Solus Ocean Systems and Oceaneering. Divers worked on platforms and pipelines deep below the surface and, and as they did their jobs they became subjects for research into the decompression safety procedures.
The pressure at 300 feet below the surface is 10 times greater than at sea level.
If a diver returns to the surface too quickly, the rapid pressure decrease causes nitrogen gas in the blood and tissues to expand, a condition known as the bends.
It can cause extreme pain in limbs and joints and create cardiac and respiratory problems. The remedy is a decompression chamber that increases pressure gradually.
Roberson learned about the bends first-hand in a 1985 dive off California.
He first dove to 272 feet, but the job required going deeper, to 326 feet. The decompression procedures used for Roberson were those for the shallower dive.
The result was hospitalization and some form of physical therapy ever since.
Now he’s a member of the International Game Fish Association’s International Committee.
“Fishing is my rehab,” Roberson said.
Roberson’s experience shows the sort of risk oilfield divers live with, although he was luckier than some.
Rusty Wright, who gets credit for first thinking about a monument to oilfield divers three years ago, said his first idea was to create a memorial naming divers who had been killed while doing their work.
But Wright, who worked in the diving industry for 25 years beginning in 1972, was afraid someone would be overlooked.
He consulted Jack Vilnas, known locally for his knowledge of oilfield diving, and Bryce Merrill, the curator at the Mr. Charlie rig museum.
“It turned out to be a monument to the people who came before,” Wright said.
In 18 months, the monument team of Wright, Vilas, Merrill, Virgil Allen and Micah Allen had raised donations sufficient to commission a life-sized diver statue by Cindy Burleson, which was unveiled as a diver monument in April 2023.
The team also gave a $20,000 scholarship endowment for the South Louisiana Community College diving program, and hopes to do the same again this year.
Saturday’s attendees got a look at a sign with the wording that will appear on a granite monument that will appear near the statue. The team has been waiting two years for the granite, Merrill said, a lingering effect of the COVID pandemic.
The text that will appear on the granite gives a brief history of oilfield diving. The top line says, "We stand on the shoulders of giants."
The rally went on without the physical presence of the granite monument.
“It makes me proud,” Mayor Lee Dragna told the audience, “that people are proud of their heritage and what they did to change a whole industry.”
Next year’s Oilfield Divers Rally Weekend is already on the schedule for April 25-26.