In a time where scuba was a bunch of sporting goods shops that started selling a new toy, The Aqualung, John Cronin had a vision of making it mainstream. The overbearing military approach to education was a roadblock in getting the masses into scuba classes and what would happen next was going to be the largest scuba diving education company, PADI.

In 1995 aquaCORPS magazine published a cover story and interview with the scuba giant, John Cronin, titled “King Cronin- PADI Chief Bent on Acquiring New Divers” written by Michael Menduno. TDI has recently rereleased many of the old aquaCORPS interviews written by Michael in a collection of diving pioneers. You can find them here, including the Cronin interview: https://www.tdisdi.com/aquacorps/

Michael is still an active diver and writer. You will see him contributing to numerous sources in the dive community still as well as on facebook. We featured another article of his “Blueprint For Survival 2.0” back on our episode 15- Actually 14.1.