Radick made films about wreck recoveries

By Edmund Tijerina

When Jerry Radick was a young boy, he loved the water so much that he made a diving helmet out of his mother's favorite kitchen pot.

It worked down to 8 feet under water. Just an early indication of what would become a lifetime passion and later a source of his livelihood.

Radick, a one-time San Antonio police officer who left his job as an insurance salesman to form an underwater photography company, died Monday of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 73.

He was a Michigan native who began diving in the Great Lakes. As a young man, he went into the Air Force and was stationed in Alaska. Later, he was transferred to San Antonio, and decided to stay.

After the Air Force, he worked for four years with the San Antonio Police Department and then sold insurance for several years.

He opened his own business, Radick Method, which helped people process insurance claims.

During that time, he met his wife, San Antonio native Rose-Mary Dunkin, a pharmaceutical company representative.

Soon after they married, they decided to pursue their dream of adventure.