Kathleen Byars
Marketing Director, Dive Rite, Inc.
Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Kathleen was surrounded by cornfields rather than water as a child. As an adolescent, she grew up in the cement jungle of Dallas, Texas, which is also not conducive to diving. However, her love for nature and all creatures was somehow instilled as she spent the majority of her young life daydreaming outdoors.
“I would lie in the backyard as a young girl and talk to the insects, squirrels, trees…it may sound crazy, but these critters were my friends. I always figured we were connected somehow. It just made sense to me.”
However, it wasn’t until 2002 that diving would take hold of Kathleen’s fate. A former international cosmetic executive, she gave up her lipstick and never looked back. Beginning her dive career in Texas lakes and quarries, Kathleen quickly gravitated to ocean diving by working as a galley assistant aboard 100-foot crew boats in the Flower Gardens Marine Sanctuary. It was there that she did her first blue ocean dive alongside a pair of manta rays. They captivated her and brought her passion for critters to the underwater realm.
Along the way, Kathleen met her husband and they began making seventeen-hour pilgrimages from their home in Dallas, Texas to dive the freshwater caves of north Florida. Still a relatively new diver, Kathleen watched in horror during her cave training as her brand-new, pink, jacket BCD was torn apart, duct taped and zip tied to create a buoyancy compensator safe enough for cave diving. She got over it, acquired the proper gear and later went on to complete her Trimix certification as well.
Kathleen decided to share her love for diving and became a dive instructor in 2004. This led her abroad to the British Virgin Islands where she worked as a dive master and boat captain. She spent an amazing year in the sun before the lure of cave diving and dive opportunities in Florida drew her back to the States. Kathleen joined Dive Rite in 2006 after contacting Lamar for a sidemount class. Instead of getting a training course, Kathleen landed a job and now her previous seventeen-hour commute to Florida caves has become a seventeen-minute drive from her home in High Springs. On any given weekend, Kathleen can be found diving at the local springs, tooling about in her new O2ptima Closed Circuit Rebreather. And on rare occasion, Kathleen delights in getting to dive in the ocean that first charmed her.