Making Waves : Diver Is First Female Member of Elite Underwater Construction Battalion

Though she is soft spoken and modest, her crushing, confident handshake betrays her true nature.

As the Navy’s first and only woman underwater construction battalion officer, Petty Officer Margaret Cooper is part of an elite group of Seabees.

There are only two underwater construction battalions in the Navy with 66 enlisted personnel in each of them.

It is a rigorous, challenging job that requires divers to be mentally tough enough to endure working in icy, murky deep water. They must have the skill to pour concrete, drill and jackhammer underwater. They have to be smart enough to pass difficult physics and medicine exams and strong enough to work under the weight of thousands of pounds of equipment.

Yet, the most difficult part about her job, she said, is leaving her husband, Richard, for seven months when the battalion is deployed.

Cooper, 29, underplays her place in history as the first woman underwater Seabee. Any attention, she says, makes her a little uncomfortable. Her work, she said, is a labor of love. Her dedication is a natural reflection of doing what she loves.

“I want to show them how I got to where I am and how much work I have put in,” said Cooper, who graduated with honors from the Navy’s dive school. “I want to show [other women] the desire I have and how they can do the same thing. You gotta have the will.”

As a child, Cooper says, she was a shy, unathletic bookworm--making her an unlikely candidate for one of the most competitive fields in the Navy. With her father in the Marines, her family traveled constantly, making it hard for Cooper to maintain any friendships.

But the military seed had been planted and Cooper joined the Army Reserves at the age of 16. Within a few years, Cooper’s love of the ocean and passion for building led her from the Army to the Navy.

She first heard about the Seabees at Navy registration, when a colleague inspired her to join up. He told her that John Wayne had immortalized a battalion in a 1944 movie called “The Fighting Seabees.” Although women were not allowed into Seabee battalions until 50 years later, Cooper said she was confident that would change soon.

But Cooper did not want to be just a Seabee. She wanted a bigger challenge--to build and fix things underwater.

“I was always into water,” said Cooper, her blue eyes brightening up excitedly. “When I heard the possibility I could build, I said ‘I gotta do it.’ I can’t sit in an office.”

At 5 feet 9 and a solid 149 pounds, Cooper was known as “Cast Iron” among her colleagues. To prepare for the dive school exam, she trained for a year--swimming, running, cycling, weight lifting and diving. She studied physics and medicine.

Her cast iron will came through when, months before her dive exam, she was diagnosed as having a form of cervical cancer. She underwent an operation, got back in shape and took the exams. She graduated with honors, and in dive school she was one of two people who passed the medical exam.

“You can’t let something like that stop you,” she said of her illness. ‘That would be an excuse. If you give up, you never know what you’re missing. You try not to let it drag you down.”

With a 70% attrition rate, dive school was the most challenging time of her entire Seabee career, she said.

“Shoot, it was tough to get into the dive school,” she said with a slight Southern drawl. “There was a time when I thought I wasn’t going to get in. I remember once I broke down in tears [studying for the medical exam].”

Today, she said she has softened a bit--her peers now call her ‘Coop’--but her drive remains the same.

Now a certified Seabee diver, Cooper has traveled to Korea, Midway Island and throughout the United States.

Up at 4 a.m., the divers sometimes work until nightfall sinking and raising barges, connecting hoses in offshore petroleum projects and repairing underwater cables.

They brush alongside sharks and seals. They jump into Arctic waters where their hands begin to freeze after hours of work.

Sometimes the water is so murky that not even a flashlight helps them find their way underwater. In that situation, they have to memorize a layout of their destination. As they make their way along the depths of the ocean, an officer above directs them through earphones inside the divers’ helmets.

They must also be keenly aware of the dangers in diving, such as gas embolism when deadly gas bubbles form in the circulatory tract. The most common affliction among divers is decompression sickness, when they come up too fast, and their joints ache from the pressure.

But Cooper said she cannot imagine doing anything else. She said she loves her job--the challenges, the pride of building something and the camaraderie.

She said her pillar of support has been her husband of six years, Richard. Richard is in the position of waiting for his wife to come home, an increasing trend for the husbands of female military personnel.

The separation is still hard to cope with, he said.

“It is hard on me but I think you have to sacrifice some things in order to get the better things--like her, her career and accomplishing her goals,” he said.

She said being a woman has not made things difficult for her in the predominantly male world she lives in.

“I know that when we are working, I’m part of the group,” said Cooper. “There is no question about that. Your life depends on your buddy and his life depends on you.”

Her supervisor agrees, not wanting to make a distinction between her and the other divers.

“Other than she is a female, she is no different than the rest of us,” Chief Petty Officer Paul Patterson said. “If you don’t enjoy [the job] you are not going to last very long.”

Although her world is not tainted by sexism, she said, there is still a long way to go. A self-confessed ‘Trekkie,’ she said she hopes one day the world will be like the one in Star Trek, where a person’s color, creed, sex or origin is irrelevant.

“I’m hoping we get to that stage,” Cooper said. “We are working toward it but we are not there yet.”

For now, Cooper said she is content with her job. She hesitates to become a supervisor because it means more time in an office. One day, she said, she would like to have children.

“Right now, as far as I can see, I am not getting out [of the military],” Cooper said. “I like it where I am at. But I am kind of looking ahead and seeing what’s there. I like knowing there are other paths I can take.”