Frank Scalli, 73; pioneer diver worked with Cousteau

As a diver, Frank J. Scalli had few equals. Whether participating in the first dive expedition to the sunken Italian luxury liner Andrea Doria or pioneering a new drift dive adventure in the Caribbean, Mr. Scalli achieved every major award in the diving industry, including his induction last year into the Diving Hall of Fame.

Mr. Scalli, an underwater pioneer who led the business development team for the industry's leading company, US Divers Company, died June 24 at his Gloucester home. He was 73 and had Alzheimer's disease.

Mr. Scalli was born in Charlestown and grew up in Roxbury. He graduated from Boston Trade School in 1949.Mr. Scalli joined the Army, serving in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 as a paratrooper with the 11th Airborne Division out of Fort Campbell, Ky. He was one of the original Army ''Atomic Soldiers," having participated in the first live nuclear detonation tests involving US troops in 1951 in the Nevada desert.

After leaving the Army, Mr. Scalli returned to the Boston area to pursue his life's passion, scuba diving. One of the founding fathers of the sport in the United States, he wrote the first nationally adopted scuba instruction manual in 1954. He was also a founding member of the Boston Sea Rovers, one of the oldest dive clubs in the country.

Mr. Scalli was instrumental in legitimizing diving by introducing scuba instruction to colleges and universities such as Harvard, MIT, and the military academies at West Point and Annapolis. Mr. Scalli served simultaneously for many years on the boards of directors of all three national diving education and certification organizations.

Following 10 years of volunteer search-and-rescue work for the state, he helped establish the Massachusetts District Commission and State Police underwater search-and-rescue teams in the early 1960s. For more than 30 years, he led the business development for the diving industry's leading firm, US Divers Co., chaired by Jacques Cousteau. Mr. Scalli and Cousteau shared a lifetime of diving and business adventures. Cousteau would visit Mr. Scalli at his home in Gloucester frequently, beginning in 1967.

For more than 40 years, Mr. Scalli supported the Cotting School in Boston, founding the annual fund-raiser Seamark and raising money to build its vision clinic, which bears his name. Last March, his beloved Boston Sea Rovers initiated the Frank Scalli Annual Summer Internship, in which a high school senior spends a summer learning about career opportunities in the underwater world.

''He was a man who loved life more than anyone else I've ever met," said his son, Patrick Scalli of Gloucester. ''He was very lively spirited, the kind of guy you loved to have around."

He leaves his wife of 51 years, Mary L. (Jenks); three daughters, Kathleen Scalli Johnson of Gloucester, Mary Scalli Powers of Windham, Maine, and Eileen Scalli Badgewick of Biddeford, Maine; another son, Frank of Rockport; four sisters, Josephine Clark of Bradenton, Fla., Frances Pietrella and Patricia LaBella, both of Malden, and Anne McDaniel of San Diego, Calif.; a brother, Donald of Malden; three grandchildren; and three great grandchildren.

A funeral Mass will be said today at 10 a.m in St. Ann's Church in Gloucester. Burial will be in Seaside Cemetery in Gloucester.