Next week marks the third anniversary of the unexpected passing of one of Blue Grotto’s best friends. Williston native Reggie Ross was an active cave and technical diving instructor who brought many students to the Grotto for skill development. He also helped us produce several videos.
Reggie grew up in Williston and, after college, returned to operate Ross Hardware at the corner of Main Street and Noble Avenue in the very center of town. The building is now Lane’s Yardware.
However, Reggie was never meant to be a hardware salesman. The only thing he truly cared about was diving — especially cave diving. He learned to scuba early on and, by his twenties, had explored all of the area’s dive sites.
Things were different back then
The springs that Reggie first dove were very different from what people see today.
- The Wray family had yet to open Ginnie Spring to the public. Before they did, they first had to cart away 23 dump truck loads of garbage. This was because, in those days, many locals regarded springs as nothing more than a convenient place to deposit trash.
- Devil’s Den was nothing more than a farmer’s field. You had to squeeze through a crack where the stairs are now to enter the water and lower yourself the last several feet to the water on a rope.
- Tom McQuarrie had just opened Blue Grotto to the diving public. Its facilities were very primitive compared to what we see today.
A gift for teaching
While many people become dive instructors, not everyone is good at it. Reggie, on the other hand, excelled at this. Reggie attended the original PADI College in San Diego in the late 1970s. Reggie soon wanted to combine his passion for teaching with his love of cave diving and became an NSS-CDS Cave Diving Instructor in the early 1990s.
What set Reggie apart from many other instructors was his ability to explain new concepts by comparing them to things students already knew. A good example is a video we produced with Reggie in which he compares various cave and technical propulsion techniques to gears in a transmission. Here is one of the videos from the series:
You can view all six videos in this series on CaveDiving.com by clicking on the button at the end of this article.
Reggie served for several years on the National Speleological Society Cave Diving Section’s training committee and was the Section’s Training Chairman at the time of his death. He was also a partner in the world’s most-visited cave diving site, CaveDiving.com.
A cruel twist of fate
Reggie succumbed to heart failure two days after Christmas in 2019. He wasn’t underwater at the time, nor was he at Blue Grotto. His sudden death came as a shock to many.
Reggie’s passing occurred just one day after his 67th birthday and less than a week before he was to receive his first Social Security payment. Reggie had paid into SSA his entire adult life and never saw a penny of it.
Reggie’s death reminds us that life is never fair, nor is there a guarantee that we will live to see tomorrow. It is better to make every minute count and to leave behind a legacy that will benefit others. Reggie certainly did, which is why many of us still miss him.