The last thing I thought I’d be doing in 2024 is making a documentary about the most viewed underwater object in the world. The iconic nine-foot tall, eight-hundred-pound bronze statue of the “Christ of the Deep” was placed in John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park in Key Largo, Florida, in the early 1960s.
The story began when I met a blind Korean War veteran named Gabe Spataro from Chicago at Hines V.A. hospital in Maywood Illinois. I was teaching a group of blind veterans to scuba dive, thanks to a grant from the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs. Gabe was in the class to get scuba certified, but he claimed he had been diving since the 1950s.
I said, “Then why am I certifying you to scuba dive now?”
He said, “Back in the fifties you didn’t need a certification.”
I said, ‘You’re right, that was called bootleg diving.”
Gabe then began telling me a crazy story of how he brought the iconic “Christ of the Deep” statue from Italy to the U.S. back in the early 1960s. I called B.S. and then he brought in photos of him at Navy Pier in Chicago in front of an open crate with the statue in it. It was crazy, but true.
Fast forward to 2013 and I’m driving Gabe home from a Diveheart fundraiser, he’s now in his late 70s, and he tells me that he’s going to dive the statue.
I said, “You’ve probably dove it a bunch of times since you brought it here in the 1960’s.”
He answered “no.” Then he told me he was going to dive it with other Korean War Veteran buddies with disabilities and one of them had a 25-foot fishing boat that they were going to use to go eight miles out into the ocean to dive the statue.
I stopped him right there, lined up a trip and got him on the statue safely for the first time in 2013.
Gabe died in December of 2023. I felt his story had to be told. I personally arranged with award-winning film maker David Marsh to make the documentary the “Legend of the Statue.” It premiered in November 2024 and is now on the Diveheart YouTube channel.
I hope you enjoy and share this inspiring story of adventure and determination when you get a chance.
