Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
An East Lake man is not one to pass up a challenge. His latest feat: jumping from a 10-meter diving platform.
By EILEEN SCHULTE
© St. Petersburg Times, published June 28, 2000
LARGO -- As a young soldier in World War II, Bob Lavanture once dove from the captain's bridge of a troop ship. Later in life, he jumped from the seventh floor of a hotel into a swimming pool.
On Tuesday, Lavanture, a retired salesman who lives in East Lake, was back up there again. At the age of 78, he climbed a 10-meter diving platform at the Southwest Recreation Center pool on Tuesday morning. He had quickly joined the pool's diving club just to get a chance to scale the Olympic-sized platform and test himself, one more time.
More than 30 feet below, there waited a handful of friends, some teammates from the Clearwater Aquatic Team Masters and kids who kept asking, "What's going on?"
On the platform, however, there was only Lavanture in his blue Speedo swimsuit. He was shaking, but he was at the edge and there was no going back.
"Hold your hands and do it," Lavanture whispered to himself. "You gotta do it. Do it. Do it."
David Anderson, the diving coach at the pool, stood below at poolside and shouted, "Okay, 10 meters, Bob. Whenever you're ready. Okay, just stay tight. Keep your legs tight!"
Lavanture, his mind racing, could not hear him. He went to the rail and waved to friends Elliott and Ruth Schoffield and Alex and Pat Ramirez-Miller, then peered over the edge of the platform at the black stripes on the bottom of the pool.
At that height, he could not see the surface of the water, only the bottom of the 17-foot deep pool. So he had to dive without knowing exactly when he would land.
There was no announcement on loudspeaker, only a shout from someone at poolside to signal it was time: "Hey kids, get out of the way, Bob's going to dive."
Then he did, separating himself from the platform and flying through the air for about two seconds before smacking the water at about 40 mph. Lavanture surfaced to the crowd's cheers. He swam to the side of the pool, stopped, held on and caught his breath.
"Oh, never again," he muttered to friends who rushed over from the aluminum bleachers where they had been sitting.
"Your hands fell apart," Anderson said.
"My head hit the water," said Lavanture. "I got the blow like someone hit me over the head with a sack of sugar."
"This is unbelievable," said Anderson. "I've never seen anybody that age do a dive like that. It's like diving from a three-story building. The old saying is it's 10 meters up and 10 miles down."
For Lavanture, the dive was the latest, and perhaps not the most daring, plunge he has made. Once, when he was 42, he leaped off the seventh floor of a hotel into an 8-foot pool, scraping his back badly on the pool's bottom. He included the story in a book he wrote about his wild life, Adventure with LaVanture. He said he had escaped death eight times.
Tuesday morning, as he walked away from the pool with his friends, Lavanture said, "Now I have to add another chapter."