(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring Jennifer Nicol, class of 1998, appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on January 9, 2003)

Missing woman followed dreams to the sea

By Jeb Phillips
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Jennifer Nicol went missing in the place she loved most, doing what she loved best.

Nicol and a friend had gone for a dive in the Bahamas on New Year’s Day. After days of searching off the coast of Andros Island, rescue divers and U.S. Coast Guard helicopters haven’t found them.

Nicol’s family has scheduled a memorial service for 7:30 p.m. Friday at the Christ Lutheran Church in Bexley, 2314 E. Main St. She was 22.

“We are still holding out hope for evidence of her,” said Robert Singletary, her stepfather. “We would love to have a miracle happen. We don’t think it will.”

Nicol’s apparent death takes away someone who had found her passion -- biology and the ocean. Fish and bubbles are painted on her bedroom ceiling.

“She loved everything to do with the water,” Singletary said.

The 1998 Bexley High School graduate began an internship last summer at the Forfar Field Station on Andros Island, a base for groups studying the biology and natural features of the Bahamas. Nicol’s job -- guiding the groups and helping with their study -- was to last as long as two years.

International Field Studies, founded in Bexley and now in Nelsonville, runs the field station. Nicol had first visited the station with a Bexley High science class and decided to return for a longer stint after she graduated from the College of Wooster in 2002 with a degree in biology.

She planned to get a master’s degree in marine or conservation biology, Singletary said, and had been studying at the station. She was preparing a research paper on fish schooling in blue holes vs. open water, her stepfather said.

It was in a blue hole -- an especially deep part of the ocean surrounded by reefs -- that Nicol was to make a recreational dive on Jan. 1. She went out in a small boat about 1 p.m. with her friend, Mark Gibson, a Bahamas native. Nicol was a dive master, and Gibson was a more experienced dive instructor.

About 3:45, a call came into the Forfar Field Station saying someone had found a boat with no one in it. Workers at the station, including Laura Kriska, Nicol’s friend and fellow Bexley High graduate, searched for her. Bahamian rescue divers went down the blue hole -- to 460 feet, an unusually deep dive -- for four hours. U.S. Coast Guard helicopters spent 17 hours in the air, using heat sensors to search for Nicol and Gibson. There was no sign of a crime, but also no sign of the two divers.

Members of Nicol’s family flew to the Bahamas on Thursday. They had just been there for Christmas, Singletary said.

“The divers, International Field Studies, the Coast Guard -- they did everything we could have asked,” Singletary said.

Nicol is survived by Singletary; her mother, Sharon Nicol; father, Lewis Nicol; and two brothers, Ben, 20, and Andy, 17. The family asks that memorial donations be made to International Field Studies, P.O. Box 428, 30 Public Square, Nelsonville, Ohio 45764.

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