A Man of Honor

By Vincent F.A. Golphin

A...S...N...F, four letters carved cryptically into the side of an old wooden radio pieced together from chicken wire and spare parts. Director George Tillman Jr.'s movie, "Men of Honor" leaves viewers to wonder until at last the puzzle is spelled out-A Son Never Forgets. In a way, the phrase explains what makes U.S. Navy Master Chief Carl Brashear, the real-life character behind the flick, tick. The son of a Kentucky sharecropper, Brashear went to the Navy to find a better life. "Never quit...be the best," his father told him. He never forgot.

"God put it in my heart, and my father put in me before I went to the Navy-to be the best, love yourself and respect other people," Brashear said during an interview with Cynthia Nevels, entertainment editor for The Capitol Spotlight newspaper in Washington, D.C. As the lyrical tones of a grand piano droned in the background, the now-retired deep sea diver and consultant on the film explained, "The movie didn't even scratch the surface of my life, how I had to pave the way and make things work without being violent." Brashear dismisses most of the injustices he endured on the path to his goal as a price to be paid.

"I was born to be a deep sea diver," he said. Conviction still rings in his voice, but he admitted that the main goal was excellence. "When I was in the steward branch, I wanted to be the best," he said. "I wanted to be the best and to do that you have to have a good attitude. You have to work hard."

From the first time he settled on diving as a goal, Brashear transferred his energies to make it a success with a single focus-to make the top grade, Master Diver, and the highest enlisted rank, Master Chief.

He was 17. It was 1948. President Harry Truman issued an executive order to desegregate the armed services, which was no more ready to make an equal place for blacks than U.S. society. Brashear was a steward, restricted to kitchen help and valet duty as most blacks and Filipinos aboard ships. As time went on he and a few other blacks throughout the various branches of the service pushed the envelope to move barriers for their race.

Brashear's opportunity knocks when he wistfully decides to take a swim on a day when only white sailors were allowed in the water. Despite the outrage of white officers and crew, he outlasts and out maneuvers the ship's best swimmer. The captain acknowledges his skill and appoints him to the squad that rescues people from the waves. The change of work, however, is no shift in status. He still has to bed with the black kitchen crew. After he joins the newly-integrated Navy, Brashear sets his sights on diving.

"It was challenging," he said. "It was exciting. It was daring to me, so I wanted to join the fraternity of the deep-sea divers. When I was a kid, I always liked to do daring and exciting things." He spent two years writing a hundred letters before his application for the Dive School program at Bayonne, New Jersey was accepted. Even then, the training officer, Master Chief Billy Sunday, wanted no part of the young black sailor or his ambitions.

Sunday is a celebrated Navy diver whose exploits as a troublemaker are as legendary as his accomplishments. He is also the son of a sharecropper. He relentlessly taunts and challenges Brashear, expecting him to falter and quit. Brashear's goal is clear. He lets nothing stand in the way of his dream of becoming a Navy diver-not even Billy Sunday.

"A deep sea diving school is designed to put a lot of pressure on you, psychological and physical pressure," Brashear said. "If they could have broken me down to where I became violent, I wouldn't be talking to you today. You have to whip them another way. Maintain that cool. Maintain that good attitude. What they were doing to me, that didn't even scratch the surface for me to get angry."

Again, he credits the example of his father. "He never showed any emotion about anything," Brashear recalled. "Even if times were hard, he never showed any emotion."

Years later, in 1966, after Brashear suffers a crippling injury, he and Sunday unexpectedly join forces. Never one to turn down an opportunity to flout the system, the rebellious senior officer helps Brashear buck the Navy bureaucracy, overcome the loss of a leg and go on to make military history. By the time he retires, in 1974, Brashear earns the esteemed titles of Master Diver and Master Chief, the Navy's highest rank for an enlisted man.

"Men of Honor" is set in the little-known and dangerous world of deep-sea diving in the U.S. Navy of the 1950s and 60s. As a diver, Brashear's universe was 300 feet underwater, where he breathed a mixture of gasses, connected to the surface by a fragile hose.

To Cuba Gooding, Jr., playing Carl Brashear was one of the highlights of the actor's acclaimed career. "I'm more proud of this film than any I've ever made," says Gooding. "I didn't have to get too theatrical about Carl's life to present a great story; it's compelling just as it is."

Gooding tried imitating Brashear's accent for awhile, the retired sailor said. It was decided that he should use his own voice, but the actor did imitate the one-legged diver's walk in the scene where he and co-star, Robert De Niro, walk toward the court room.

The film has most of the dramatic touches moviemakers use to pique audience interests, but DeNiro said the true-life adventures of navy divers are drama enough.

"The description 'salvage mate' doesn't do these divers justice," he notes. "This is a very specialized skill. Even today these divers risk their lives working at sites of downed aircraft, like Egypt Air and John Kennedy, Jr.'s plane, salvaging what they can."

Though appreciative of the actors' and filmmakers' praise, and proud of what he has achieved, Carl Brashear is humble. "I never referred to myself as a hero," he says. "I had a job to do and a goal to reach."

Brashear's achievements and indefatigable spirit clearly impressed director George Tillman, Jr. "When I read the script and then met Carl Brashear, I related very strongly to his experience," says Tillman, whose last film was the acclaimed drama "Soul Food." "Carl comes from a solid loving family, but he had goals outside their lives. Determined to succeed against all odds, he stayed focused, overcame setbacks and even lost track of those supporting him because of this tenacious tunnel vision."

Tillman launched his career as a teenager, too. In Milwaukee, he made experimental video projects and created, "Spice of Life," a public access cable show using local talent. During his years studying film and video at Columbia College in Chicago, Tillman created, Paula, a 30-minute short about a 17-year-old single black mother who works in a diner, yet inspires people. He created a homespun hero. The movie won the Midwestern Student Academy Award, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame Award and prizes at six other student festivals.

Along with veteran producer Robert Teitel, Tillman raised $150,000 to bankroll his next film, "Scenes for the Soul," based on three urban Milwaukee experiences. The picture was completed with a $400 profit, which the partners used to drive to Los Angeles where they sold the feature-length film to Savoy Pictures for $1 million. Out of that success came the momentum that sealed their partnership, created the production company State Street Pictures and "Soul Food," his biggest triumph to date.

"I realized," Tillman continues, "that some of these aspects related to my path as a filmmaker. And I believe audiences will find a part of themselves in Carl-the best part of themselves-perhaps the part they haven't used lately."

Producer Robert Teitel, who also collaborated with Tillman on "Soul Food," recalls, "We read the script in March 1997 when we were editing 'Soul Food,' and fell in love with it instantly. When we went to Virginia in November and met Carl, that was it. He is an inspiration, so we wanted to do the story justice."

The project began in 1994 under the aegis of executive producers Bill Cosby and Stanley Robertson, who interviewed writers about their takes on Brashear's story. "Bill and Stanley heard pitches on doing Carl's story as everything from a gangster picture to a musical,'' recalls screenwriter Scott Marshall Smith. "I saw it more as a classic drama of the '50s. My job was to elevate it to the level of drama that was already evident in Carl's life."

To make sure he captured Brashear's incredible spirit and story, Smith worked closely with Brashear. While much of his screenplay is inspired by true incidents in Brashear's life, Smith did invent the character Billy Sunday, whom he calls "a memorable opponent" representing a composite of various Navy men whom Brashear met during his career. At the same time, Brashear said he actually served and received help after the amputee incident from a master chief named Lewellyn William Sunday.

"This isn't a connect-the-dots biography," says Smith. "I follow Carl's life and career, but my goal was to be true to his spirit, not his shirt size. Everyone wanted the script to resonate as much as possible, so as a dramatist I sometimes took it up a level."

Brashear said sometimes the script cut out the monotonous nature of his trials. For example, the scene where the diver has to walk twelve steps in a 290-pound suit to save his career. "I did it over and over and over again," the retired diver recalled, "plus other things-walking up and down ladders with barbells on my back, doing deep knee bends, riding bicycles four and five miles. I'd come back off a run and my [amputed] leg would be all bloody and I wouldn't go to the dispensary.

"The movie doesn't scratch the surface," he said. The first test of Brashear's ability to remain a diver happened three months after he got an artificial leg. He sent pictures of successful dives performed at a Norfolk, Virginia dive school to the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. They wanted to see him do it in person, so he was ordered to report to a ship in the Washington Navy Yard. "We changed it [the test] from the ship to the boardroom [in the movie] to make it more official (looking)," Brashear said.

With Smith's screenplay in place, the filmmakers began the casting process, which yielded the results they had always hoped for. Says Tillman, "Cuba Gooding brings his entire range of talent to the role. His tremendous instincts, joyful personality, essential goodness and vulnerability all contribute to creating a leading character that compels our attention."

To Tillman and Teitel, Robert De Niro is Billy Sunday. The filmmakers were dogged in their pursuit of the actor, as legendary in his own right as the character they wanted him to play.

"Robert De Niro, of course, has a tremendous body of work," says Tillman, "which could have been intimidating but instead made me feel comfortable as a director. I respect that he always wants to try something different, something new. Billy Sunday has the dynamic of being a racist but he has other dynamics, too. De Niro adds great dimension to what is already on the page."

Sunday's wife, Gwen, is played by Charlize Theron. Scott Marshall Smith sees Theron as the perfect wife to Billy Sunday, describing her as "a tough but vulnerable bombshell." Smith continues, "Gwen married Billy because his notoriety and rebelliousness made him irresistible. Her mistake was marrying him at the height of his career and hanging on as he spiraled downward. She must find the maturity to handle their many crises."

Theron was intrigued by Gwen's inner strength, which develops through the story. "It's wonderful to play a character who is that resilient," she notes. "Many characters in this movie have something they have to make peace with. For Sunday, it's that he can no longer be what he wanted to be-a Navy Diver. And for Gwen, that means coming to realize that this is her life; this is the man she loves. She's not going to go to Hollywood and be a movie star. She'll never even get across that river from New Jersey to Manhattan."

Carl and Jo Brashear are another couple depicted in the film. Jo is played by newcomer Aunjanue Ellis, who has appeared in George C. Wolfe's "The Tempest" on Broadway as well as in independent films. Like Sunday and Gwen, Carl and Jo have their problems, as Carl's duties frequently take him away from their home.

For Ellis, the role of the patient wife was not unfamiliar. "I had cousins and uncles who served in the military, and I heard first-hand how harrowing and scary it can be for the woman-in-waiting. It's definitely a job of perseverance."

Cuba Gooding, Jr. took special note of the film's portrayal of families. "I've been really blessed in my career to have played roles that have shed a positive light on African-American images," he explains. "In Men of Honor, I appreciated the chance to portray a man from such a solid family. When Carl marries Jo, they struggle to hold their family unit together, while he strives to be a Navy Diver, and she a doctor. It was another factor that attracted me to a script that has action, romance, entertainment, inspiration and history."

Brashear also finds a family, however dysfunctional at times, in the Navy. Mister Pappy, Commanding Officer of the Navy Dive School, was perhaps the most unusual member of this naval "clan." Mister Pappy, portrayed by Hal Holbrook, is a specter, a ghost-like character who psychologically terrorizes the trainees from his watchtower above the base. Brashear said the character was just as bizarre in real-life.

"The movie brought back a lot of memories, but I never had any bitterness," the ex-diver said. "I loved the Navy when I joined it and I love the Navy today. If I'd had bitterness in my heart, then I could not have prevailed. I had a good attitude about where I was trying to go and what I was trying to do, but no bitterness."

At the least the Carl Brashear story provides a sort of "Top Gun" for the Navy salvage corps, but it offers so much more. In 1998, the ex-diver became one of only seven enlisted men enshrined in the naval archives with a 164-page transcript on his life and career. In a nutshell, his dogged determination to follow the preachments and example of his father, a Sonora, Kentucky sharecropper, shows that just as sons inherit the sins of the men who went before them, they can inherit their grace.