Northeast Working Equipment Group
Labor Day 1997 Working Equipment Rally
Willow Springs Quarry - Richland, Pennsylvania
JEFF STURGESS in Ray Butts' Desco MkV
THE NORTHEAST WORKING EQUIPMENT GROUP held its fifth annual Working Equipmant rally at Willow Springs Quarry Park in Richland, Pennsylvania, (between Reading and Lebanon in southeastern Pennsylvania) over the three-day Labor Day Weekend. With three air compressors online, there were as many as four umbilicals in the water at some times, and the gear dived included U.S. Navy MkV helmets owned by members Jim Folk, Bob Rusnak and Ray Butts. This year we made extensive use of David Sutton's red Viking vulcanized rubber dress for the MkV dives - as the photo above shows, Ray Butts' un-tinned 1944 MkV made a colorful sight on Sutton's red Viking dress! Ray also had his own authentic MkV canvas dress.
BROTHERS DAN AND PETE HEALEY got their first heavy gear dives on Labor Day Weekend. Fifteen-year-old Dan posed in the MkV rig (above) just before his dive. Eighteen-year-old Pete was dressed into Jim Folk's Amron/Nokia drysuit (below) by his father, a commercial diver, for his first surface supply dive in a SuperLite 17.
DEE CHOU HWONG from Singapore was not being beheaded; Raymond Tucker was putting Ray Butts' MkV helmet on him on Monday as Stefan Deters from New Brunswick, Canada, worked as back tender.
A FORAY into the name game occurred when Ray Petry (diver) was being dressed into the MkV owned by Ray Butts (rear left) as Ray Tucker (rear right) and his son Ray (front left) helped tend. After the photo they all broke into a chorus of "When the Rays Go Marchin In."
TOM BUTTS made his VERY first MkV dive late in the afternoon on Labor Day Monday
in Jim Folk's MkV and Dave Sutton's Viking Dress.