 Robert F. Burgess was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on November 30, 1927.He built his first diving gear out of a World War II gas mask, 50 feet of air hose, and an air compressor to explore a Michigan shipwreck in 1944.At the end of World War II, he served as a ski trooper with the 88th Infantry Division named the Blue Devils by the Germans, and took his GI Bill abroad, studying French first at the Berlitz Language School in Trieste, Italy, and later at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland.