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In the old days of brass helmets and dangerous depths, Phil Fatolitis was a model of macho. Now he’s a model of longevity.

By JEFF KLINKENBERG, Times Staff Writer
Published September 28, 2006

TARPON SPRINGS -- The old man still dreams about the bottom of the sea. He dreams about sponges, about tiger sharks, about big-hearted men he figured would live forever but are now gone.

“It is hard getting old,’’ the old man said. Of course it is. You outlive your friends. Your body rebels. Your short-term memory fails. And yet you can’t forget.

He has not forgotten the time he found a body. He pulled on his helmet, descended to the bottom and lumbered against the tide to look for a sponge diver who had become incommunicado.

The other diver lay on the bottom, his neck black, his tongue protruding a good foot. At least that is how the tongue looked through the glass of the diving helmet when Phil Fatolitis saw him.

What had happened? Fatolitis couldn’t be sure. He tugged his safety rope, and his crew topside hauled him up.

“Drowned man,’’ he announced.

Maybe other divers would have quit after that. But Fatolitis loved everything about the sea, from the wind on his sunburned skin to the danger. Diving for sponges was in his blood: Back in Greece, his diver grandfather had jumped overboard while grasping a boulder to carry him into the depths.

The other day Fatolitis — pronounced fat-o-LEET-iss — was talking about diving at the dinner table of his little bungalow on Read Street in Tarpon Springs. Actually, he was talking about his sadness about not diving. “My doctor doesn’t want me to even scuba,’’ he complained.

If he could, he would put together a crew one last time. They’d take the boat way out into the gulf, perhaps as far as the Middle Grounds, and for the last time he would haul on the suit, and his crew would bolt the heavy brass helmet to the breastplate, and he would slip overboard and wait for the satisfying moment his heavy boots touched rock bottom.

He would rake in sponges.

But let’s not talk foolishness. He is 82, with a bad heart and bowels.

“You couldn’t put together a crew like that anymore anyway,’’ he said. “All those guys I knew, guys who really knew what they were doing, are dead.’’

He is among the last of his kind, a diver from the glory days of Tarpon Springs who wore the classic heavy gear, the iron boots, the old-fashioned helmet, equipment most frequently found today in maritime museums.

“It’s just me and one other diver from the old days who is still alive,’’ Fatolitis said. “He’s in a nursing home here in Tarpon. He can’t speak. I went to see him yesterday.’’

The phone is going to ring one of these days.

“I know his family will want me to be a pallbearer,’’ he said. “But I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring myself to do it. It would be too sad.’’

***

For a man with his ailments, he looks surprisingly healthy. He has good skin despite all those years in the sun. He has lively brown eyes and a thicket of white hair on his head and eyebrows, and on his chest and his back. Macho lives.

He came into this world on

Dec. 16, 1923, in Indiana, a fact he can only blame on his parents. During the Depression, they moved to Tarpon at the invitation of Uncle Petros Fatolitis, a sponge diver who promised employment.

Once Phil completed sixth grade, he was finished with formal schooling.

“I become a sponger when I was 12,’’ the old man said the other day. They’d go out on the Demetra , Uncle Petros’ boat, for three weeks at a time. The boy helped with the lines, scraped sponges, hung them to dry and dreamed of the day he might be allowed to dive.

His father’s unfortunate accident didn’t discourage him. Fatolitis’ father had gotten the bends on his first and only dive. The decompression sickness damaged his brain, and he never walked again without dragging his leg. He died at 35.

“Ready to dive?’’ Uncle Petros asked one day in the Gulf of Mexico. The energetic boy was 16 and immortal. On the rocky bottom, he located many fine sponges. Uncle Petros was proud. The crew was proud. They let him take home $1,200 of profit to give to his mother, a small fortune in 1939.

The sponge is still important in Tarpon Springs. High school students, after all, call themselves “the Spongers,’’ and tourists still buy sponges in the gift shops along Dodecanese Boulevard. A couple of boats leave the docks on the Anclote River weekly.

But it isn’t the same. Now there are about a half-dozen boats; once there were 300.

“It’s hard for me to visit the docks now,’’ the old man said. “It’s pitiful.’’

When he was a young man, a deep sea diver was a hairy-chested hero, the most macho of men.

“Tarpon was like the Old West. And we were like cowboys.’’

After unloading sponges, the divers headed for the cafes to eat lamb and stuffed grape leaves and to drink and smoke and sing.

They talked, argued about women, fought with their fists, bled, spat out teeth, threatened murder, shook hands, said, “No hard feelings. See you tomorrow.’’

***

Soon he had his own boat, Melba, named after the first of many wives. How many wives? It is a sore subject. He counts his marriages on the fingers of more than one hand. Sponge divers seldom made the best husbands. They were away too often and too long. Ashore, they felt restless, dreamed of the sea.

A blight in the late 1930s killed sponges. Spongers left for the steel mills in the Midwest. Fatolitis dived deep, found enough sponges to get by because he was willing to go anywhere in the gulf, even the deep water.

Not everyone could dive in deep water in those days, when the technology was relatively crude. They lacked stamina. Some divers landed on the bottom, harvested a bag or two and surfaced right away. In deep water, 120 feet or more, Fatolitis could stay down an astonishing 25 minutes if necessary without getting the bends. In shallow water, he remained on the bottom for hours.

Hit the bottom, lean against the tide, lean so far forward your helmet almost scrapes bottom. Rake up the sponges, hopefully the valuable wool sponges, stuff them into a bag. Signal the boat. The crew hauls up the bag and sends another. Fill it again.

Mind what you’re doing.

Pay attention to your air hose.

Shark!

Hammerheads swam close. Tiger sharks. Both man-eaters. Phil Fatolitis wasn’t afraid of tiger and hammerhead sharks.

Oh, but the bull sharks.

“Cotton-pickin’ bull sharks. They were real aggressive.’’

Face them while retreating slowly. If they swim out of sight, tug the line five times, sponger talk for “Shark! Haul me up quick!’’

Another blight struck in the 1940s. More spongers dropped out, tried other lines of work — or died, not so much from broken bodies but pickled livers.

Fatolitis rigged his boat to catch snapper and grouper when the sponges were in short supply. He worked construction, building useful houses that stand today. When the sponges returned, he returned to the bottom.

Technology changed. Nobody had to wear the heavy dive suits anymore. Instead divers wore lighter, less expensive equipment, including modern face masks modified with breathing hoses. The new equipment worked well, though some old-timers disdained the new. Once they had navigated by the stars and located prime bottom not with electronics but with rope and weights tossed overboard.

***

The oldest of Fatolitis’ six children is 59. The youngest is 14, a high school freshman. The other day Fatolitis called for Shelly, who was in her bedroom doing schoolwork on her computer.

“Can you help me with the DVD player?’’ he yelled.

Flustered, she bustled into the living room and helped her dad start the DVD machine.

The old man watched a documentary made in Tarpon Springs almost half a century ago. As it begins, a group of men are bidding, in Greek, for sponges at the auction house. The winner fills his truck with sponges.

Then the action shifts to a boat heading down the river toward the gulf. Crewmen work on rigging, getting ready for life at sea. The handsome captain smiles into the camera with huge white teeth. He must have wowed the ladies.

The captain in the movie is Phil Fatolitis. He climbs into the dive suit and disappears over the side. The water is a murky green-gray. He creeps along the bottom like a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal because of the current. So many sponges, and he probably felt he could harvest them all.

“It was very good work,’’ Fatolitis said quietly when the movie ended.

Everybody knew how to work hard. Nobody got drunk at sea, at least when he was captain. Nobody went hungry. The cook was known for his fine beef stew and the way he leaned over the pot as the growing ash at the end of his cigarette defied gravity.

They went to sleep when the sun did, though sometimes a man wanted to talk, maybe about problems with his woman back on shore, and of course he always found a sympathetic ear.

“I miss the old days,’’ Fatolitis said. “When I watch this movie, I remember them and I feel good.’’

It was Hemingway who said that all good stories have to end the same way.

The old man ran down the roster of the crew who were in his movie, six good men, dependable men, who gave him their all.

Name by name.

“Dead. Dead. Dead, dead, dead.’’

Phil Fatolitis, with a faded tattoo on his forearm that says Melba, is the only one left.

Jeff Klinkenberg can be reached at (727) 893-8727 or klink@sptimes.com.

Source - St. Petersburg Times