After arriving in New Paltz in 1985 to study art at SUNY, Kathy Frizzel landed a job at Convenient Deli. Growing up on Long Island, Frizzel had left her home at an early age and was accepted into the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in Manhattan. After two years of hustling to survive while attending the prestigious fashion school in the City, Frizzel decided to apply to an undergraduate institution further north where she could learn sculpture and woodworking. “I applied to New Paltz and Bard and was accepted to both, but there was no way I was going to afford Bard!” she said with a laugh.
Frizzel had many odd jobs, including driving a big red truck for the Freihofer’s fleet; but the one that stuck was at Convenient Deli, a college and middle school hub right in the center of town off Main Street and Manheim Boulevard. Long after she graduated, Frizzel continued to work and manage the shop, from 1985 to 1998, and decided to purchase the store from owner Gary Haas in 1998. Frizzel had owned and operated the busy deli, open 24 hours seven days a week, for more than 20 years when she decided to sell it in January of 2020 — fortuitously, just months before the COVID-19 shutdown.
During this time, Frizzel also dove into her passion for SCUBA diving, getting licensed in 1996 with instruction from George Campbell, a retired New Paltz High School Earth Science teacher. Campbell has prepared many a local aqua-lover for dive certification, which always required the actual testing to be done in Lake Minnewaska — usually sometime in late autumn, when the water was frigid. “I’ve always loved SCUBA diving, and after I got certified with George, I would dive in the Caribbean whenever I could get away on vacation.”
Friends of Frizzel’s kept trying to get her to dive locally, which she resisted for years. “Once I tried it, I got totally into it,” she said. “It’s harder, colder and takes a different skillset. It was more technical, which I really enjoyed, and I decided to become a divemaster, which is one step below becoming a SCUBA instructor.”
She co-taught with Campbell, helping to get people certified, and then stopped for awhile when she was getting ready to sell the Deli. Her plan, after selling the business, had been to spend at least a month teaching SCUBA and enjoying some peak dive time in Bonaire, one of the “ABC islands” (with Aruba and Curaçao) in the Leeward Islands and a fabled destination for divers. “But then the entire world shut down” due to the pandemic.
Bonaire did not happen, but she began looking online and interacting with British SCUBA instructor Wayne Miller, who was planning to offer dive courses in Cozumel in the summer months of 2020. “He started the Trident Warriors Program, which is similar to the Wounded Warrior program, but focuses on free SCUBA diving instruction for veterans,” she said. “SCUBA diving can be very Zen, because you can’t really think about anything else except what you’re doing in that moment. It can be very calming.”
Frizzel jumped on a plane (which was practically empty) and landed in Cozumel, where she co-taught with Miller for the summer. They taught so well together that he invited her to come to Egypt the next year to help him certify veterans on a live-aboard dive boat that he was taking to the Red Sea. “It was so inspiring and amazing. There was a sunken World War II boat, the SS Thistlegorm, an armed British Navy cargo ship that was sunk by German aircraft,” she explained. “It’s an underwater World War II museum in the Red Sea. It’s unbelievable. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would go to Egypt, dive in the Red Sea, help teach veterans how to SCUBA dive — and go see the pyramids? Be in a museum in Cairo? At the foot of the Sphinx? Traveling by camel? I actually wept and wondered, ‘Whose life is this?’”
As for teaching diving, particularly working with veterans, Frizzel fell in love with it. “My father was a US Marine, and I think that also gave me a greater love and appreciation for the work that Wayne was doing. I think my Dad would be proud of me,” she said, adding quietly, “I know he is. He passed in 2011.”
Frizzel was so inspired that she went on to get her full dive instructor license and started to run classes herself. “George [Campbell] was getting ready to retire and he kept sending people my way,” she said. As a result, Frizzel now runs Ulster SCUBA. She’s offering three courses this summer, the majority of which take place at her home in High Falls, where students can learn how to use the equipment and gain the skills they need in her backyard pool and the classroom she has created out back. “We do a lot of pool work and classwork. It’s four-and-a-half days,” she explained.
To get fully certified, she has her students go to Lake George, where they have to perform two dives from the beach and two from the boat. “Lake George is very beautiful and very clear,” she noted.
In addition to her dive school, Frizzel also drives a New Paltz Central School District bus during the school year. “A lot of my customers at the Deli during the day were teachers, custodial workers, transportation workers from the school,” she pointed out. “They were always encouraging me to think about doing a bus route when I sold the Deli.”
Once the schools were back in session following the pandemic, Frizzel became a licensed bus driver and has not looked back. “I really enjoy it, and the schedule is great. I have the summers off for SCUBA and holidays and weekends, so it’s kind of perfect.”
The second act of Frizzel’s career also includes getting back to her woodworking and sculpture roots. “It’s been a while and I’m a bit rusty, but I’m having fun getting back into it,” she said. If you want to become certified in SCUBA diving and are looking for a summer course, check out Frizzel’s local business at www.ulsterscuba.com.
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