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| Ric Clarke |
Tom Michalski: Victory over himself
Tom Michalski has kept the secret securely locked away for most of his life.
He has hidden a part of himself from everyone except a trusted few, who helped him overcome an enormous obstacle.
No more. It's been five months since Michalski retired, and his outlook has changed.
Today, he realizes that what he once regarded as a source of shame is really a cause for pride. So the charade is finally over.
Michalski confided that he never learned to read or write beyond about a third-grade level. He is dyslexic.
It's a handicap that forced him to quit school to avoid embarrassment and has tormented him ever since. Michalski lacked one of the most basic tools to succeed in our society.
It didn't prevent him, however, from building a thriving business during tough economic times. At 62, Michalski realizes that he has earned the right to declare victory.
"It's exciting to me now," he said. "Without a high school education, I still won."
Most of us don't know much about Michalski's business endeavors. But many do know about his scuba diving exploits.
His beaming, bearded face appeared on the front page more often than Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. He provided fascinating fodder for story after story that marveled and entertained us and occasionally drew a tear. Michalski's long, wavy hair and bushy beard are neatly cropped now. But he still exudes a boyish enthusiasm as he reflects in his usual light-speed, fragmented sentences on a decade of scuba diving stories -- stories he couldn't read.
He remembers the stigma that was attached as a young student to stumbling over printed words.
"I would have done anything to read. Every time I wished for something -- on my birthday or when I saw a falling star -- I wished I could read," he said. "That's all I ever wanted."
As a high school freshman, he sat terrified in a history class as the students took turns reading aloud from a textbook. When the rotation finally reached him, Michalski refused to humiliate himself. He bolted from the classroom and never returned.
He had made it through school to that point by listening, listening, listening and committing everything he heard to memory. It was a skill he would perfect from then on.
He went to work briefly on the family's dairy farm in Kidd Island Bay until his father died and Michalski convinced his mother to sell the farm and move to Coeur d'Alene. He then worked in grocery stores and delivered beverages for distributing companies.
Literacy wasn't a big issue as a beer truck driver. But he was still haunted by his handicap.
"Every morning I woke up with fear -- afraid that if I lost my job, I'd never get another one," he said. "The fear was always there that I was going to get caught. Someone's going to find out that I don't know how to read and I'm going to be a dummy."
In his early 20s, he took a tentative but important first step to overcome the obstacle. He decided to learn to scuba dive.
Michalski shared his secret with his instructor, who walked him step-by-step through the process. He seemed to learn instinctively without the use of a manual. He was a natural.
Before long, he was working dive jobs during his free time -- installing water lines and repairing docks. Michalski invested the money he made into his new hobby, which was consuming more and more of his time.
About then, Michalski met his first wife, Michelle. Together, they struggled with his disability and spent thousands of dollars on tutors and psychologists.
Little was known about dyslexia at that time. His handicap went unrecognized.
They did learn, however, that he also has attention deficit disorder, which further hampered his ability to read. But ADD would ultimately prove to be an ally.
The disorder manifests itself in adults not only with hyperactivity, but also the capacity to keenly focus on an objective. Michalski was becoming known as a skillful diver with an uncanny ability to solve technical problems.
He was also a hyper but magnetic adventurer who was learning where to find submerged "treasures" by talking to old-timers along his beer truck route.
Michalski scoured Lake Coeur d'Alene with a sonar device to find the remains of all but one of eight sunken steamboats. Dozens of other items, ranging from antique bottles to valuable china vessels, fill his Fernan Hill home.
He was also adept at finding the bodies of drowning victims after law enforcement agencies had failed. It was a grim task but also rewarding, as Michalski provided closure for families.
In the early '80s, Michalski decided to take yet another step farther out on the proverbial limb. He earned his certification as a scuba instructor the same way he became a diver. He relied on memorization to teach the technicalities of the sport to hundreds of scuba students.
In 1987, Michalski took the final, big step. He left the beer truck business and opened his own dive shop.
"That was scary," he said convincingly.
Tom's Diving Adventures operated from a boathouse near Cougar Bay for 17 years. Michalski leaned heavily on business partner Eric Rouse to handle the documentation and to help shuttle students to exotic dive destinations, but most of the success was due to his own resourcefulness and determination.
The commercial side of the business was building along with the retail when the "Sally incident" occurred. In 1999, a close friend died in a scuba mishap while diving with Michalski.
"I never taught a class again. I couldn't do it," he said. "I'd see people's hair in the water and the way it flows, and it just reminded me of death. I was terrified something would go wrong."
The shop was also beginning to suffer with rising insurance and energy costs and the advent of the Internet. So Michalski got out.
He sold the retail business in February, two months before he married his third wife, Sherrie, who is also an avid diver.
Michalski still tends to his commercial clients and will continue to for as long as he can.
"I love it. If I won the lottery tomorrow, I'd keep doing what I'm doing and just do it for free," he said.
He has no plans to quit the hobby that helped him get through life.
"I don't know what else I would have done. The diving worked out for me," he said. "Thank God, there was something I could do. I just really lucked out."
Ric Clarke can be reached at 660-8720 or by e-mail at anozira2@aol.com.
