Fifty Years of Community Service!
The Garden State Underwater Recovery Unit (GSURU) was originally formed in 1958 by five SCUBA divers from the Milford-Phillipsburg NJ area and officially incorporated 2 years later in 1960.
"The Unit" was the result of a desire by these men to do something good for their community and at the same time indulge their passion for the then very new sport of scuba diving. (As an organized sport, diving was at that time only about ten years old.)
Our original mission was the recovery of the remains of those who had drowned along the Delaware river. Until the early 1960's, recovery of drowning victims was accomplished by the old fashioned and rather barbaric method of dragging the river bottom with an array of large grappeling hooks. As often as not, these hooks were nothing more than the largest available treble hooks used for fishing.
There was no "official agency" which did this kind of work, and the task often fell to local fire departments aided by a small group of "river rats" who had grown up on the river and knew it's every eddy and sluice hole.
According to the late Steven Hardick, our former Captain, and oldest son of one of the founding members, those who formed GSURU realized that "there had to be a better way" to recover the bodies of those who had drowned. They decided to put their new SCUBA skills and equipment to work and formed a group dedicated to going out into the river at any time or place and searching for those victims so that their bodies could be returned to the family and given a proper burial.
Since there were no official textbooks or lesson plans on how to do this work, the fellows just kind of made it up as they went along. Eventually, they developed a set of general rules and rough guidelines for doing the job safely and efficiently.
In the mid-1960's, Steve became a SCUBA instructor for the YMCA and in 1975 was appointed chairman of the YMCA's NE committee for Search and Recovery. Along with some other instructors, he oversaw the creation of the county's first text on Underwater Search and Recovery.
At present, The Unit has about 12 active divers and as many support personnel. Our mission remains the recovery of drowning victims, but has expanded since the early days to include recovery of criminal evidence, light salvage work, UW inspections and public education in the many areas of water safety.
Unlike most fire departments and rescue squads, we do not have a specific coverage area, and will travel just about anywhere we are asked to help out. We most frequently respond to jobs from the Delaware Water Gap Recreation Area in upper Pennsylvania, downriver to Lambertville, New Jersey, and to the many ponds, lakes and reservoirs in between.