# With his son lost at the bottom of the river, a father turns to one man who might find him



## Ooh-Rah (Jun 18, 2017)

I love reading stories about people like this. What a service he provides to families who have lost loved ones in water accidents....

With his son lost at the bottom of the river, a father turns to one man who might find him

Standing on the shore of the Mississippi River, Dave Dady watched as divers came to the surface. Another day’s search was over and his son’s body was still lost in the dark waters.

Six anxious days had passed since Jesse, a 21-year-old St. Cloud State University student, most certainly fell 60 feet from a train trestle into the cold river moments after sending a Snapchat video to friends to capture the beauty of a March night under a crescent moon.

As the police tape came down and the divers’ markers came up, Dady’s heart sank. He feared they would call off the search and wait for the water to warm in hopes that his son’s body would float to the surface.

“I couldn’t breathe,” said Dady who drove 50 miles from his home in Oak Grove to the river’s edge every day of the search. “No one wants to find their child dead. But what’s worse than that is not knowing where they’re at. It wrecked me.”

He ached for a last goodbye. Desperate, he turned to a man in Minnesota no parent ever wants to have to meet. Tom Crossmon is a Minnesota man who travels the world recovering bodies underwater.


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## AWP (Jun 18, 2017)

This reminded me of a simply badass story.

Raising the Dead



> After Shirley checked that Shaw was OK and retrieved some spare gas cylinders hanging on the shot line below, Shaw showed him an underwater slate on which he had written *270m, found body*. Shirley's eyebrows shot up inside his mask, and he reached out to shake his friend's hand.
> 
> Shirley left Shaw, who had another eight hours and 40 minutes of decompression to complete. As Shirley ascended, it occurred to him that Shaw would not be able to resist coming back to try to recover Deon. Shirley would have been content to leave the body where it was, but Shaw was a man who dived to expand the limits of the possible. *He had just hit a record depth on a rebreather, and now he had the opportunity to return a dead boy to his parents and, in the process, do something equally stunning: make the deepest body recovery in the history of diving.*
> 
> "Dave felt very connected with Deon," Shirley says. "He had found him, so it was like a personal thing that he should bring him back."



Where No One Should Go


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## Ooh-Rah (Jun 18, 2017)

AWP said:


> This reminded me of a simply badass story.
> 
> Raising the Dead
> 
> ...



Wow.  I don't usually have the attention span to read something of this length, but I didn't skip a word.

The article reminded me of reading attempted recovery stories on Everest - this quote from the story has stuck with me; and I think it works for both the sea and great heights....

_"Equipment can go to those depths, but your body might not be able to."_

Thank you for sharing this.


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## Ooh-Rah (Jun 18, 2017)

Re: Raising the Dead article that @AWP posted above.  
Video from the helmet cam is on youtube- "Last dive of David Shaw"- with narration.

Just the process of getting back to the surface from that depth, sitting at 20' for an hour.  Amazing discipline these divers have.


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## Red Flag 1 (Jun 19, 2017)

.


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## AWP (Jun 19, 2017)

Red Flag 1 said:


> Diving to that depth is something I can't wrap my head around yet. There is so much pressure, and unless your mixture is dialed in exactly, help is a long way away, with do quick way to get there.



At this point the math is pretty well worked out, but everyone's physiology is different and equipment breaks. Like jumping, you can do everything right and still die.

I don't feel like looking it up, but the US Parachute Association has a safety blurb about jumping and diving, how many hours to wait between the two, etc. I don't know if PADI and the others cover this in their training, but I'd hope so.


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