AC_1965_Web

187 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K WA L L A C E WALLACE CHESTER A. THEN AND NOW 4 B.A. Geology 4 Ph.D., Geology, University of California Santa Barbara FAMI LY 4 Wife, Margaret 4 Son, Chet, Jr. 4 Daughter, Victoria ADDRESS 4 7492 So. Sourdough Dr. Morrison, CO 80465 CONTACT cawallace.geologist@att.net 303 697-8636 303 908-1400 A F T E R G R A D U A T I N G F R O M Antioch, I went to the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) for a graduate degree after spend- ing three months doing field work for the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Utah. I was in good com- pany at UCSB inasmuch as Nick and Susan Muska and Joe Deane were there. There may have been other Antiochians at that time also, but my feeble brain cannot recall their names. The Muskas were particu- larly close because of our travels together through Europe as part of AEA and we remain in contact to this day. We returned to France and Besançon together a few years ago. In graduate school I continued working for the USGS, which sup- ported field work for my disserta- tion. I spent four summers mapping about 1,200 sq. mi. of the western Uinta Mountains in northeastern Utah, all by horseback. I had my own pack string (pack and saddle horses) that I used to traverse can- yons and peaks (13,000 ft.+) in in- credibly rugged terrain in the Uinta Wilderness and environs. Sometimes I worked alone (dumb) and some- times I had an assistant (less dumb, but still dumb). I’d be in the field with my pack string for weeks at a time to make the geologic map that I was being paid for, along with an- cillary studies that would support my dissertation.The work was hard. Each spring I had a rodeo caused by horses that had been on open range for eight months and didn’t want to be ridden. Bears and mountain lions made a difficult job even more diffi- cult.Waking up to a blanket of frost, pulling on frosty and wet boots to bring horses into camp through a swampy meadow before I started the campfire for coffee, is a grim re- minder of why I don’t camp now. I purchased my pack string using a student loan obtained through UCSB, which in the late 1960s was possible.After I completed this proj- ect I sold the horses and tack and paid off the student loan. I don’t like horses much, to this day. During my tenure at UCSB, Britann Eliel and I married in 1968, and in 1969 we set off to Americus, Ga., where I had a teaching job at Georgia Southwestern College.The NDEA Fellowship that I had at UCSB required that I teach at a “lesser” ac- ademic institution for two years—I stayed for five years and became en- amored of teaching and its rewards. While at Southwestern I made per- manent friends of students, faculty and locals. My cultural learning curve in Georgia was steep—the South looked different from the in- side than from the outside view that I had at Antioch but in many ways the South is still the same and it was a very difficult place to live. Britann and I started our family in Americus (also known as Sucirema by my stu- dent friends), and both of my chil- dren, Victoria and Chet Jr., were born in Americus to their eternal embarrassment. This growing fam- ily soon outstripped my ability to earn bucks, so I took a position at Conoco in Ponca City, Okla., I was in Conoco R & D, and was told to find a project that I liked (unusual). I opted to work in the South China Sea on some initial exploration ven- tures there and I developed an en- tirely new procedure that could determine the time that hydrocar- bons moved into a reservoir. At the same time I was courted by the USGS to work in western Montana. Reconnaissance geologic mapping in western Montana was a dream job for me, so I left Americus and Ponca City and moved to Denver to work for the USGS. My marriage fell apart in Denver in large part because of long ab- sences while I did reconnaissance mapping and also because my wife had success needs that I didn’t un- derstand at the time. We agreed to share the children and their ex- penses.We forged the first joint cus- tody agreement in 1979 in Jefferson A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z