Clifton Diving Ventures

Kurt Started diving in 1972 to help out his brother Randy, who had been certified as a diver while attending Western Illinois University. But when Randy was gone to school, Kurt had no one to dive with other than the few Sheriff Department divers or the Firefighters. Kurt worked for several area law enforcement agencies throughout his career starting with the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Dept., Maple Park PD, Elburn PD, and finally, the Kane County Sheriff’s Department where he was in charge of their Dive Rescue Unit. Kurt and Karen opened CDV in May of 1983, and have been running classes ever since. In 1996 Kurt became an instructor for the Handicapped Scuba Assoc. and started to teach for the International Association for Handicapped Divers in Houston, TX at the DEMA trade show. Fraser convinced Kurt to cross-over to the IAHD, and a great partnership was formed. Since then Kurt has traveled to Key Largo every December to help train new instructors and persons with disabilities about the freedom diving gives to people with disabilities. For the past three years, their group of dedicated instructors has been giving soldiers back from the war the chance to scuba dive as a form of therapy. In 2009, the Eagle Divers and Deptherapy had the first ever multi-national soldiers dive in Key Largo, with three Royal Marines coming over from Great Britain, as well as the groups from Ft. Campbell, and Walter Reed. Thus making this the first international meeting of the soldiers and their spouses. In 2010, Kurt helped Fraser Bathgate form Disabled Divers International the newest Training agency for people wishing to train persons with disabilities. He was instrumental in co-authoring the DDI instructors manual along with Sole Viktor. Kurt and the staff of CDV have been designated the Instructional staff for the Eagle Divers group of Fort Campbell, KY.