Although she barely weighed 100 pounds and stood 5 feet tall, legendary diving pioneer and trailblazer Dottie May Frazier, who died recently at 99, never let anything stand in the way of her long life of adventure and achievement.

At an early age, she learned how to fend for herself. When she was a young girl growing up in Long Beach, her father taught her how to box to protect herself from boys who were teasing, pushing, hitting and name-calling her.

“One day, I fought back and gave a few bloody noses and black eyes using my fists as dad had taught me,” she said later in a book on her life. “Afterwards I was looked on as an unusual girl not to be messed with.”

In her later years, in her 90s, Frazier liked to wear a T-shirt with the saying, “Assuming I was like most old women was your first mistake.”

That was Frazier. Feisty and fearless.

But her fighting spirit and heart finally gave out Feb. 8, when she died peacefully and unexpectedly at the East Long Beach home she had lived in for more than 80 years.

“I was holding her hand when she passed,” said Cyril May, her husband of 50 years. “Old age just caught up with her.”

A celebration of life in Frazier’s honor is set for July 16, May said. Coincidentally, May’s birthday is on the same day, July 16, as Dottie, but a different year. He was born in 1929; she was born in 1922.

Frazier’s lifetime achievements are as varied as they are astonishing.

In the 1940s, she started teaching freediving, one of the first women to do that. In the 1950s, she became the first female scuba instructor in the United States and maybe the world. She had to overcome sexism and the prejudices of men who thought scuba diving instruction was too physically demanding for women.

Frazier, a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, was the first woman to own a dive shop, where she ran dive classes and sold wetsuits she designed. She also was one of the first female hard-hat divers. She was a charter member of the Long Beach Neptunes dive club. In 2019, she received the prestigious USA Diving Pioneer Award from the Historical Diving Society.

She was also the first Girl Scout in Long Beach, playing the bugle and sounding reveille and taps at the Girl Scout camp in the mountains. Her mother was one of the first Girl Scout commissioners in Long Beach.

Frazier also had been a swimsuit model, a competitive billiards player, a racquetball player, a surfer, and a water and snow skier. She knew how to fix auto transmissions and used to ride motorcycles around the region. She sold her last motorcycle in 2019 after the DMV would no longer renew her motorcycle license — but her driver’s license had been renewed until 2023.

A 1939 Poly High graduate, Frazier worked during World War II as a Rosie the Riveter with Douglas Aircraft. She also worked in commercial fishing while raising four boys. (The surname Frazier came from her second marriage; May was her third and current husband.)

Her adventuresome spirit took her dredging for gold in the Sierra Nevadas, and fishing, boating and motorcycling in San Blas Puerto Mexico and Baja Mexico. She used a spear gun to kill a wild boar that attacked her on Catalina Island. In 2013, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Press-Telegram’s former Amazing Women program.

Accolades from friends and family came pouring in when news of Frazier’s death spread.

“Dottie was a classic, one of a kind,” said Jeanne Bear Sleeper, a fellow member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame. “Those of us who followed in her fin wake owed much to her ‘breaking water’ for us. She was so ahead of her time.”

Lorraine Sadler, another member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, said Frazier was the only female mentor she had during the early years of her diving career.

“And for many decades, I learned so much from her,” she said, “not just diving, but including (but not doing it very well) on how to shoot pool.”

Barbara Allen, another Women Divers Hall of Fame member, remembered a memorable trip to Catalina Island, during which Frazier’s boat stopped dead just outside the mooring buoys.

The Harbor Patrol, Allen said, offered a tow — but Frazier rebuffed it.

“Dottie said, ‘Heck, no. If I can’t fix it, I don’t belong out here,” Allen said. “She grabbed her toolbox, found and fixed the problem and we were off again.”

Frazier and her father, Francis Reider, also had a close connection with the YMCA of Greater Long Beach. Frazier was the first female member at the Y. Her father was a board member of the Downtown Y and sponsored the “Reider Cabin” at Camp Oakes in the San Bernardino Mountains.

Frazier helped renovate the cabin and went ziplining at Camp Oakes when she was 95.

“Living life to the fullest was a hallmark of Dottie’s life and her time with us,” said Alfredo Velasco, president and CEO of the Y. “Whether it was the desire to have the YMCA record as the oldest zipliner, competing against anyone who would dare play her in a game of pool or dressing up in her colorful and flashy outfits at special events, Dottie was larger than life.”

Frazier was born Dorothy Adell Reider on July 16, 1922, to Francis and Laura Davis Reider, who lived on Ocean Boulevard, one block from the Pacific Ocean.

Her father and grandfather, W. Reider, built a bathhouse closer to the beach and then the original Long Beach Tent City to house tourists attracted to the growing city’s waterfront.

Her father loved boating and had a sailboard, a 21-foot sloop named Dotadell, taken from her name, Dorothy Adell. Her father also was a Long Beach harbor commissioner and Long Beach water commissioner.

“I started going out with dad on boats when I was only 2 years old,” Frazier said once. “The Pacific Ocean was my playground.”

When she was 3, she jumped into Alamitos Bay and swam by herself for a half block to the beach. When she was six, she made her first dive into the ocean near Catalina Island to get a coffee pot her father had accidentally dropped off their boat into 15 feet of water.

At 7, she plunged into the ocean to save her 5-year-old sister, Jeanne, who had fallen off their boat near the Long Beach harbor entrance.

Those were just some of the early adventures for Frazier, who spent much of her remarkable life in a world of water.

The first time she wore a diving mask — made by her dad from pieces of fire hose, inner tube strips, glass, tape and glue was — “like a miracle,” Frazier said in an interview two years ago.

She describes the incident in more detail in the book, “Trailblazer: The Extraordinary Life of Diving Pioneer, Dottie Frazier.” The book can be purchased on Amazon.

“I could see everything under water as clear as if I were on the surface,” she wrote. “From this time forward, this became my world. New discoveries presented themselves daily amid this constantly changing underwater wonderland.”

When she was 10, a devastating earthquake hit the Greater Long Beach Area, on March 10, 1933 — but Frazier, in a later interview, remembered it like it was yesterday.

“I woke up to find white lilies all over my body, and I was very wet,” she recalled.

She had been sitting by the fireplace doing her homework when the quake struck.

“The large vase above me on the mantle had fallen off and landed on my head and knocked me out,” she said. “When I awoke, I grabbed my cat, Mouchy, and my pet rat and went with my family to Signal Hill and then to my father’s boat moored in the harbor.”

More than 120 people died during the quake, including 53 in Long Beach, making it the state’s second-deadliest earthquake.

Although Frazier loved the water, her “sanctuary” was her home and garden, her husband said. Until almost the day she died, May said, Frazier took care of a fantastic array of fruits and vegetables.

“She was most proud of her garden,” said Danny Frazier, one of her sons and a retired San Luis Obispo fire captain now living in Paso Robles. “It was like diving for her.

“She challenged herself because she wanted to be self-sufficient,” he added. “She kept rain water in big barrels for her plants. She grew beans, tomatoes, strawberries, beets, artichokes, broccoli and squash.”

She was especially proud of her Anna apple tree and orange tree.

Her son, Danny Frazier, said that besides her professional achievements, his mother also had a big heart when it came to helping people.

“It was amazing how many people she helped to get back on their feet,” he said. “Her generosity and kindness was exceptional, and she didn’t talk about it much. She just did it.”

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Despite a severe fall in 2018, which caused a concussion and kept her from walking for two months, Frazier was adamant that she wasn’t slowing down and was getting back into shape.

“Nothing’s going to keep me away from more adventures,” she said then. “I’m a survivor.”

Much of her resiliency and optimism, Frazier said, came from her grandmother, Mattie Reider, who wrote a poem about Long Beach rebuilding itself after the 1933 earthquake. She said she especially liked this stanza:

“Did Long Beach give up? Well, let us see/Old man depression was on the run/The new Long Beach has just begun/The future looks bright for you and me/In our beautiful city beside the sea.”

In the past few years, Frazier would talk about her father dying just one month short of his 100th birthday.

“My father told me on his deathbed, ‘I didn’t make it to 100 so now it’s up to you,’” she said in an interview two years ago. “I told him I’d reach it for him. That’s my goal. I’ll be 100 on July 16, 2022.”

She missed her goal by five months and eight days. But she will be at the 100th party in spirit, with all of her friends and family — who will toast the life of a most remarkable woman.

Besides her husband, Frazier is survived by her sons Donald, David and Danny Frazier; two grandsons and five granddaughters. She was preceded in death by son Darrell Frazier.