An Old Friend, an Old Tank, and a Memory Worth Sharing

Brent Clevenger   Sep 04, 2026

Every once in a while, someone walks through the door and the whole shop slows down for a minute.

That happened this week when Andy, an older diver who’s been around the sport for decades, stopped by Sink or Swim. Andy was a name I’d heard many times before — my diving mentor, Allen Reese, used to tell me stories about him. Meeting him in person, and talking shop for a while, felt like getting to close a loop Allen had opened years ago.

A Tank Full of History

While Andy was here, we ended up looking over some old steel cylinders with their original visual inspection (VIP) labels still on them — the handwritten nitrox percentages, the punch-card style dates, the old Sharky’s Dive Center stickers marking years of inspections. It’s the kind of detail most divers never think twice about, but for us it was a direct line back to how Allen taught us to do this work.

Allen was meticulous about it. How a tank got labeled for nitrox. How a cylinder was set up and checked before it ever went out the door. It wasn’t just paperwork to him — it was part of taking care of the diver on the other end of that tank. A lot of what we still teach in our classes today, especially the fundamentals, traces straight back to habits Allen drilled into us.

Why We’re Sharing This

Allen passed away recently, and it’s still something we’re processing. Moments like this one with Andy — pausing to swap stories, to recognize an old label and remember exactly why it was done that way — are a gift. They’re a reminder that the standards we hold ourselves to didn’t come out of nowhere. They came from someone who cared enough to teach it right the first time.

So this one’s for Allen. Thank you for the foundation.

Learn the Fundamentals We Still Teach

If you’re curious about the kind of hands-on, detail-first training Allen helped shape here at Sink or Swim, check out our Open Water Scuba Diver course or, if you’re ready to go further, our Nitrox certification class — both built on the same fundamentals we’re talking about here. And if it’s time for your own tanks to get a proper visual inspection, reach out to the shop and we’ll get that scheduled.