There’s an Illinois Diver named Jim Elliott whose organization has got a lot of heart. I guess that why he named it www.diveheart.org. The ability to be a mentor to his daughter began when she was very young. You see, his daughter Erin was actually born blind. And she didn’t feel comfortable being teased in school about it either so much so that she insisted that she could see. She tossed the cane aside not to mention the fact that she refused to learn braille.
"She struggled with being blind, and when she got to be about nine years old, I got her involved with downhill skiing, and all of a sudden, it was "Erin the skier," and not "Erin the blind kid." It built up her confidence and changed her whole life," said Elliott, 53. Little did he realize that the transformation that took place in her life would translate into a thriving business and one that’s truly rewarding.
Being a driven business owner is one thing but being able help other disabled people to move past identities defined by disability is quite another. Elliott’s passion for scuba diving combined with his love of teaching disabled people to overcome their physical limitations translates into a unique business that’s got a lot of heart.
Jim Elliott is the president and founder of Diveheart and his nonprofit organization, is based in Downers Grove, Illinois. He’s the scuba teacher with programs around the country. In addition, he has also helped establish disabled diving programs around the world. And there’s no one else quite like him.
Learning how to swim and learning how to dive are quite different, and diving is actually easier to learn. Among his students: children born with disabilities to veterans with traumatic brain injuries. They learn how to experience a kind of weightlessness and freedom.
Imagine if you will for a moment when he takes a person out of wheelchair and puts them in the water. That’s zero gravity, weightlessness. Imagine for a moment if you can the look on their face when they start to realize that if they can dive, they can do anything.
One of the most inspirational stories is that of U.S. Marine Corps Sergeant Greg Rodriguez. He suffered incomplete paraplegia in a car accident right before he was due to deploy to Iraq. Greg told Chicago T.V. station WGNTV: “Doctors refer to it as [a] traumatic brain injury, but I refer to it as my nightmare.”
"At that time in my life I thought that I was useless, you know, good for nothing because I had to depend on everybody," said Rodriguez, 27.
What changed his life and after he learned how to dive? He felt like he could do anything. And thanks to Jim’s help he’s also now a part of the organization.
Jim’s passion is Diveheart and I’m happy to announce that it recently received a grant from the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs. The organization is looking for veterans working through injuries, and post-traumatic stress disorder, who want to learn to scuba dive for free. What an incredible gift he has and his heart is in the right place when Jim says "There's a real need to reach out to these guys and gals and get them in the water and turn their lives around."
Jim’s love for diving began in college in 1976, and he continued on by becoming instructor in the 1980s. He actually left a six-figure salary in ad sales and started teaching people with disabilities to dive in 1997, and launched Diveheart in 2001. Diving is a physical therapy that can be very accessible: "The real progress that we see can be done in swimming pools, and there's a pool in every community," says Jim.
One final note: the Diveheart team of instructors and dive buddies introduce young adults with autism to scuba diving April 16th as part of the Diveheart adaptive scuba training. New scuba enthusiasts will be learning skill sets as part of an academic and life skills curriculum. This will result in a life changing trip to Cozumel, Mexico in July 2011.
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