A boy and his father's watch

A lesson in not waiting

From the time I was a boy growing up, fantasizing about who I would become, all I ever wanted to be was someone cool and adventurous. Someone outside of myself. Someone who was not the kid from a broken home, living with an alcoholic mother, where no one in the family had achieved anything more than finishing their high school education. My real life heroes were explorers - astronauts, divers, mountaineers - men that seemingly did the impossible. My fictional hero was James Bond, for all the obvious reasons.

The aforementioned “obvious reasons”

I grew up without a father. To compensate, my mother enrolled my brother and I in the Big Brother program, where fathers or older men would sponsor boys and treat them as sons during visits once or twice a month. My brother was assigned a Big Brother who was someone a young boy yearned for in a father, a gregarious man with lots of kids who would take him to baseball games and include him as part of his family.

My assignment was different. My Big Brother was a middle-aged architect. A nice man with a pleasant wife. They were a childless couple, and he entered the program because they thought it would be fulfilling to mentor a boy.

The relationship was short-lived. Although well-intentioned, my Big Brother and his wife were ill-equipped to mentor an eight-year old like me. It had taken a long time to find me a match in the program. By then, I was jealous of my brother because he would go to baseball games and eat ice cream with his Big Brother. Do “Dad Stuff.”

My Big Brother was not interested in doing any of these things.

My only recollection of the short time I spent with this gentleman involves going to his impeccably crafted house, sitting in his study, and answering the question: “What do boys your age like to do?” I responded with an eager recitation of attending baseball games, eating ice cream, watching James Bond movies and the like. I may have even told him excitedly of Bond’s watch in “Live and Let Die,” a Rolex Submariner with magnetic properties and a whirring saw blade hidden in the bezel. I don’t remember his exact reply, but I know it included the word “no,” spoken with resignation and something akin to admitting defeat.

Nevertheless, my Big Brother cared and he tried to show me how to be a man, not a kid. He gave me a watch, “Because a man should have a watch[,]” and he emphasized that it had to be Swiss. The watch was an Anker, I believe, but the make and model are no longer important. I cherished that watch. This gift was a monumental act of kindness that I was not accustomed to. I wore it all through middle school and into high school.

But the watch was a dress watch and it was not waterproof. It did not withstand the rigors of summer camp, swimming, hiking, mountain climbing or scuba diving, which I began doing at the age of 14. The watch went with my mother when she moved to California after my senior year and I never saw it again.

I began getting to know my father when I was 18. He did not care about watches, but he understood the practicality of Harris tweed, Hickey Freeman suits, polished shoes and a navy blazer. I was still interested in underwater and the outdoors. To bridge the gap between us, my father bought me a supposedly waterproof Seiko watch to replace the Anker. I wore the Seiko all through college, until it flooded on a scuba dive, 90 feet down and near the end of my no decompression limit. I never trusted it (nor the brand) again. I still own the Seiko, even though I have not had it on my wrist in more than 30 years. I keep it because it reminds me of my father.

My heroes had one thing in common: they all wore Rolex watches. Sir Edmund Hillary, Don Walsh, Jacques Cousteau, Bob Ballard, Chuck Yeager, Scott Carpenter and multiple astronauts. Even James Bond. ESPECIALLY James Bond! A Rolex watch was specified as a necessary accessory by Ian Fleming in the original Bond novels, and the character always wore a Rolex Submariner in every movie that I devoured as a kid. I had to have one.

This ad spoke to me!

Naturally, a Rolex is not cheap and it took me some time to be able to afford one. When I got my first real job in 1991, I bought myself a Rolex Submariner and all was right in the world. I had arrived. I had achieved at least one childhood dream.

Next, I managed to merge my career with my growing interest in exploration. I met and became friends with most of my childhood heroes, and I began to follow in their footsteps. I dutifully wore my Rolex Submariner on all of my adventures - scuba diving, skydiving, deep submersible diving to Titanic, diving 16,000 feet deep into the Bermuda Triangle - and it served me well.

16,000 feet deep in the Bermuda Triangle

My son was born in 1996. Fatherhood is life’s greatest adventure for me. I had little guidance in parenting while growing up, and I have always tried to be the best father I can be. I wanted to do “Dad Stuff” with my son (and later my daughter), even as I was then acting as an adult in search of a childhood. I taught my son to swim and shoot, we read books about sharks and stars, went flying together, snuck rides on my motorcycle, and I took him to a rocket launch.

Little did I know, but my young son had a hero: Me.

Speaking at my son’s elementary school

My son also had an affinity for watches. Not just any watch, but his DAD’s watch. I discovered this in 2002 when I had a horrible motorcycle accident not far from the house. The bike was totaled and left smoking in a ditch. I was banged up and left smoking on the road, after going asphalt surfing at 60 mph and burning through my protective clothing. I was unable to walk. The neighbor called my wife and she arrived in her minivan, kids in their car seats in the back, to drive me to the hospital (because it was faster than waiting for the ambulance). My six-year old son was horrified at the sight of his father. His eyes were huge and he was visibly upset.

Long story short, my Rolex took the brunt of the impact when I hit the pavement and the strength of the watch saved me from breaking my wrist. The watch was in pretty rough shape. When my son came into the hospital room to see me, injured and covered in bandages, he said only one thing: “Dad, please take care of your watch, because I was hoping you would give it to me someday.” I was floored by this remark and it was burned into my brain.

I had the Rolex repaired — the shattered crystal replaced and the broken bezel corrected — but I would not allow the repair center to polish the deep scratches caused by the asphalt surfing from the bracelet or the case. I wanted a reminder that I didn’t have to be stupid to be tough.

The following year, I went on my second Titanic expedition and there I met a well known British diver named Carl Spencer. I was in awe of Carl’s accomplishments as an explorer, but even more so by our shared upbringing, our common heroes, and all our similarities. Like me, Carl wore a Rolex dive watch (the Sea-Dweller, which is an uprated Submariner), he had a young son who idolized him, and he planned to give his watch to his son someday. We bonded over our mutual interests and became good friends.

Carl Spencer. Photo by Leigh Bishop.

As I completed successive expeditions with my Rolex on my wrist, I started hearing my son’s voice in my head more and more. “Dad, please take care of your watch, because I was hoping you would give it to me someday.” I was taking more risks, and the likelihood that the watch would be broken or lost was growing. So, as I prepared to go on my third Titanic expedition, this time as the leader, I retired my original Submariner from expedition duty and I replaced it with a Sea-Dweller.

In 2009, Carl died while leading a deep diving expedition to explore the wreck of the Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic. He did not want to go. He was on the phone with me the week before saying he felt uneasy about the expedition but he felt pressured because he didn’t want to disappoint the team. I tried to bribe him with a casual dive trip with me instead, and he was sorely tempted because our boyhood heroes, Scott Carpenter and Buzz Aldrin, were going and he had never met them. But Carl went to Greece instead. He died a week later, tragically, in an accident that was totally avoidable.

In the wake of his death, Carl’s widow auctioned his watches, including the Rolex Carl wanted to give to his son. Her husband’s death had left Carl’s widow in dire straights, and the family needed the money.

When the hammer fell at auction, the watch sold for just $50 over what was then the market value for a similar Rolex Sea-Dweller in any second-hand jewelry store.

I was crushed. A family had lost a husband and a father, and — for the sake of $50 — a young boy had lost a tangible reminder of who his father was and what he had accomplished.

I immediately gave my Submariner to my son instead of waiting until he was an adult, as I had planned to do. He was 15 at the time, and he proudly wore it on our first dive trip together that year. My son treasures this watch. Giving it to him at that time — when I could still see him enjoy it — was one of the best decisions I have ever made.

A boy and his father’s watch, making it his own.

My son is 29 now. He’s a fine young man, and he still wears his father’s watch. But it’s his now, and he has made his own memories with it. I would not want it any other way.

My son, shortly before driving 155 mph in his father’s car.

Postscript: In 2017, Ben Clymer at Hodinkee heard the story of Carl’s watch and he put out the call to see if we could find it. We did, but the owner declined to sell it back to the family, even at a premium.

All of my loved ones now have watches from my collection.