Rocknocker: A Geologist’s Memoir. George Devries Klein
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a student draftsman. I spent the year drafting measured columnar sections that were on file and thus quickly learned Kansas geology. My supervisor was Bill Ives, who also worked part-time on his PhD. I also met other Kansas Geological Survey geologists, learned how such an organization functions, and its mission. I valued the experience, although the pay was not great.
The semester started and I discovered that both the undergraduate structural geology and the mineralogy courses ran field trips to the Arbuckle Mountains in Oklahoma, Magnet Cove, AR, and the Eagle Picher Mine area of southwest Missouri. I joined them, saw great geology and collected some nice mineral specimens. It was well worth the time.
In Oklahoma, we stayed at an old hotel in Sulphur, OK, and Louis Dellwig (BS, MS, Lehigh, PhD Michigan; structural geology; KU; served as an Army Captain during World War II and had most of his left shoulder blown away during the Battle of the Bulge) invited the teaching assistants and me to his hotel room to share a bottle of scotch he brought with him. Oklahoma was a dry state and KU did not permit alcohol at any campus functions. Louis told us that after the sacrifices he made during World War II for his country, no bluenoses were going to tell him where, when and what to drink. Louis was a lovable, yet crusty individual, and he became my Master’s thesis supervisor.
The geomorphology course also had a one-week field trip to the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. We camped the first night within a V-shaped highway intersection near Guymon, Oklahoma, and were kept awake most of the night by passing trucks. I remember having dinner at a Mexican restaurant in Santa Fe with Ralph Lamb (BS. MS, Kansas, Chevron - later Exploration manager in Latin America) and Billy D. Holland (BS, Texas, MS, Kansas, Humble, chief geologist for Pogo Petroleum, president of his own oil company). They helped make decent choices for the first Mexican meal I tasted.
We camped on the eastern rift shoulder of the Rio Grande Valley and while completing a field mapping exercise, H.T.U. Smith pulled out a revolver from his car and started firing away across the valley. No one was around and it gave a wild western touch to the trip. I also realized that the departmental faculty included some colorful people.
Back on campus, Bill Hambleton helped my confidence by letting me teach his classes whenever he was away on state business. It also earned the respect of the students in the class.
At the end of the semester, I earned two A’s, one B, and a C in aerial photography. That C grade resulted from a team-exercise to prepare a geological map from air photos and I was paired with a student who did not fulfill his end of the bargain. I completed a hurry-up job at the last minute.
As good as KU was, it was also extremely uneven in quality and standards. One had to pick and chose selectively to maximize the experience. When discussing this with H.T.U. Smith before he left in 1956 to move to the University of Massachusetts, he said, “It’s very hard to set standards higher than those around you.” His statement stayed with me since then. I saw firsthand what he meant in every university where I taught as a permanent faculty member.
I returned to complete my first semester, and worked at the Kansas Survey during the between-semester break. I also experienced the first of many ice storms which made walking to campus difficult. I moved to a room closer to campus, and because there was an unrented room in the building, I arranged for a new PhD student, Stuart (“Duffy”) Grossman to rent it. Duffy completed his undergraduate and Master’s at the University of Illinois and just returned from Military duty.
Another new student whom I befriended, John C. Mann, also arrived after serving as an Army Captain in Korea. I spent time with these older students and they taught me much. Lloyd Foster, a graduate of VPI (Now Virginia Tech), was a third new arrival. He was just discharged as an Army Captain having been in combat in Korea. Lloyd was likeable and I enjoyed his company, but he hadn’t quite discarded his army fatigues, talked loudly, ordered people around, and did his share of stepping on peoples’ toes. Usually a good sense of humor brought him around.
Despite the year at Hopkins, I was only the second youngest person in my entry class.
I also befriended three other graduate students. Charles Dodge was a second-year Master’s student working with H.T.U. Smith. Charles earned a BA from Princeton, and on completing his Master’s moved with Smith to the University of Massachusetts as an Instructor while working on a PhD. Jim Sorauf was awarded the Pan American Fellowship. He earned a BS and MS from Wisconsin and was undertaking a PhD with Raymond C. Moore in paleontology. He made his career as a professor at the University of Binghampton.
The third graduate student I befriended was Alistair (Al) McCrone. A Canadian, he earned a BS from the University of Saskatchewan and a MS from the University of Nebraska. He spoke with a Scottish brogue and completed a PhD in stratigraphy, also with Moore. He taught at NYU, serving as its Dean of their Graduate School, and moved on to become President of the University of the Pacific, and, later, President of Humbolt State University.
I also met Daniel F. Merriam (BS, MS, PhD., Univ. of Kansas; stratigraphy and mathematic geology, Kansas Geological Survey (KGS), Syracuse University, Wichita State University, KGS; William Smith Medalist of the Geological Society of London) who worked at the Kansas Geological Survey and was completing a PhD with Raymond C. Moore. Dan worked for many years at the KGS, then headed the department of geology at Syracuse University, then did the same at Wichita State University, and returned to the KGS. Dan was responsible for pioneering the field of mathematical and computational geology. In his later years, he also wrote books about Raymond C. Moore2 and the history of the first hundred years of the KU geology department2. As both our careers advanced, I came to appreciate Dan’s contribution more and more in time.
One of the differences between KU and both Wesleyan and Hopkins was that the majority of graduate students were married; some also had children. A large contingent of students came from Texas and all were married. I knew them around Lindley Hall and in class but because they went home at the end of the day, I seldom saw them outside of working hours. I discovered later they tend to marry much younger in The South, and also in rural areas. I also became good friends with Ed Gutentag who graduated from Brooklyn College and served in the Military. He contracted TB while on active duty, was cured, but as he explained later, he received disability payments for life which covered his education expenses along with the GI Bill.
Mann, Foster, and Grossman also received GI Bill benefits but they were also awarded teaching assistantships. In Mann and Foster’s case, they had earlier offers of TA’s from KU but went into service first. KU was obligated to give them their TA’s on return.
Second semester I enrolled in Advanced Structural Geology (Dellwig), Economic Geology (Hambleton), Petroleum Geology (Walter Youngquist, BA, Gustav Adolphus, MS, PhD. Iowa; paleontology; International Petroleum; KU, Univ. of Oregon; Consultant), and field stratigraphy taught by the eminent Raymond C. Moore2. Moore earned a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1916 and joined KU afterwards. He was chairman of the department twice, Director of the state geological survey once, and spent most of his time while I was there in his office editing “The Treatise of Paleontology”, a multi-volume compendium of all fossil groups.
Moore was an austere individual who could be both gruff and kind at the same time. Stories about him were legend and he put the fear of God into the hearts of many generations of Kansas students. However, if a student worked diligently and did their homework, he took kindly towards you. He later became president of the Geological Society of America and was definitely one of the major figures of stratigraphy and paleontology in the world. He taught me much and I admit that I modeled some of my career after my perceptions of him.
Moore was an awe-inspiring leader, responsive to critical needs, and if one demonstrated that you were focused on your goals, he respected a student. He was very thoughtful in his replies to me, and extremely helpful.
Moore also imparted a sense of professional commitment and how important commitment was in developing a career.
After a month, I dropped Petroleum Geology. Youngquist had a mean streak and graded idiosyncratically. In discussion one day he was unable to consider alternate points of view advanced by students, particularly those whose fathers were in the oil business, and unjustly penalized them. I was not learning much.
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