Friends have told me they wasted their high school years.  Due to a lack of motivation they remained undecided or uninterested in a career path and didn’t learn much. Alternatively, I was a model student in high school but lost it in college, especially the three years at Mines.  I sowed my oats later than others, but despite my immaturity, I was still VERY motivated by geology.  During the summer after graduation, I prepared my first resume and identified a career goal—to get a PhD in sedimentary geology and paleontology, not a very practical work plan if the recipients were tavern owners looking for a part-time bartender.

Despite my renewed motivation, it still took me 17 years to complete graduate school, from 1968-1985. Why did it take so long?  Various answers come to mind: (1) I didn’t grow up overnight, (2) Vietnam required that I teach four of those years, (3) I actually had several professional jobs during that time that contributed to my experience, and (4) various other excuses including money, health, and two failed marriages.

The summer of 1968 was a busy one.  I was serving beer and pizza at the Big Banjo in Glen Elyn, bartending for my aunt in Geneva, and taking my first graduate course at Northern Illinois University, regional stratigraphy, taught by Dr Robert Morris.  I drove to DeKalb in my Karmenghia every Saturday morning from mid June to the end of July to take notes and pound on Paleozoic rocks.  I still have the text on my book shelf, Stratigraphy and Life History (1965) by Marshall Kay and Edwin Colbert, both renowned old-school geologists.  The book was unfortunately published at the onset of the plate tectonic revolution, a paradigm shift, a new way geologists thought about a mobile planet.  The book did not mention the embryonic theory and used the term “geosynclines” to describe long, often narrow, sedimentary basins on continental margins around the world to explain mountain chains.  Today these sedimentary repositories are woven into the fabric of plate tectonics and continental drift.  A mountain of new information began to appear after this book was published: magnetic stripes, polar wanderings, matching intercontinental rock records, matching fossil assemblages, geographic distribution of volcanic arcs, and deep seismic profiles.  Our view of the world was changing, and grad students at the end of the 1960’s decade were at the forefront of a scientific upheaval.

I started dating Irene that summer.  We later became romantically involved.  She was majoring in elementary education and was close to receiving her degree.  Irene was also head secretary of the geology department, working mostly for the department chair, Dr Malcolm (Mac) Weiss.  Her job was actually that of an administrative assistant, but back then, especially for women, her position was classified as clerical.  Irene typed for Mac and other faculty members, but also managed a host of other chores.  She eventually worked exclusively for Dr Sam Goldich, a geochemist, who studied the evolution and composition of igneous and metamorphic rocks.  Sam was at the tail end of a long and renowned career, a confirmed bachelor who ordinarily didn’t like to work with women, but he had tremendous respect for Irene and always found money to pay her salary.  The backdrop here, in the late 1960’s is of course well documented—women were directed into elementary and secondary teaching, nursing, clerical positions and needed the permission of husbands to do most anything.  Vietnam was still explosive, marijuana use was a felony offense, and minorities were just surfacing from their subjugation as second class citizens.  In retrospect, it seems like eons ago!

I met other grad students and faculty.  Irene shared an apartment with Betty, another education major.  Since I was living in Geneva and commuting 50 miles roundtrip daily, it was refreshing to have an oasis near campus.  Irene and Betty had many friends, some of whom were a bit out of the mainstream.  There was Marty, a grad student in English, a crazy guy who would spontaneously spin any conversation into an exchange of puns.  I recall one evening when we went back and forth on the corn theme—it was DeKalb after all.  “I really do have an ear for your thoughts”.  “That’s a lie, and I’m gonna stalk off.  You don’t have even a kernel of decency.”

Connie was a chain smoking English major, very intelligent, a quick study, radical and outspoken, and Jacob, who used more expletives than anyone I ever met, but sensitive and caring.  I think he grew up in the hills of Kentucky and showed up at a party once with a quart of authentic corn whiskey in a mason jar given to him by a cousin.  That 190 proof sip made my lips quiver.  The geology grad students were also pretty atypical, out of the mainstream with their tattered lumberjack shirts and beards, hard working, absorbed in the history of an ancient planet.  Some of the students were graduating and had jobs waiting, others would continue graduate school elsewhere for a doctorate—NIU at the time did not yet have a PhD program in geology.  Others like me were just getting started, and our conversations in the coffee room, a small closet off the main hall, centered on intellectual matters of mutual interest.  The environment was very different from undergraduate school.  I loved it.

Rockford, Illinois

By late August I move to Rockford and St Bernadette’s School.  Neither the school nor the city grabbed me, but I had a mission in mind—to keep my newly acquired 1-H teaching deferment.  I found an upstairs walkup apartment in an old house near the school but didn’t feel particularly enamored with it.  Nonetheless, I signed a one-year lease and moved in assuming that I would only be around for one year.  Of course I told nothing of my future plans to the pastor and principal.  Rockford at the time was a Midwestern rust belt community.  Heavy industry had left the city, a drab and unkempt urban center waiting for the next boom.  It didn’t come during my brief stay.

A week later, I met the other faculty, the nuns and lay teachers, including Joe, the other 8^th grade lay faculty member whose elementary teaching career was intended to last no longer than mine, and Stewart, the new music teacher and choir director.  Stewart was from Virginia.  He was a year or two older than me, a tall handsome guy with wavy blonde hair and a pleasant tidewater Virginia accent.  He approached me after the first faculty meeting and asked if I was interested in sharing an apartment.  He had already signed a lease on a new two bedroom, two bath unit close to the school in a beautifully appointed apartment complex.  I was immediately convinced because I would save money, and his apartment was far superior to mine.  Anyway, I liked Stewart and thought we would get along well.  My 9-month contract awarded me $4,500, a motley sum even in those days, considering I worked far more than 8 hours/day.  When I enthusiastically agreed to the proposal, Stewart pulled me aside and informed me that he was gay.  I had suspected that anyway and told him I could care less about his sexual preference.  Of course we both agreed that his social behavior needed to be held in strict confidence—can you imagine, a Catholic parish choir director teaching small children in 1960’s Rockford, Illinois.  I’m sure most parishioners equated homosexuality with pedophilia.  I called the owner of my upstairs apartment and asked if I could break the lease asap.  He was pretty angry but agreed to the deal since I had already given him a month’s rent and a security deposit.  I think he had another renter in mind anyway.

Stewart and I got along well.  We shared responsibilities for the apartment, cleaning, and utilities.  It was Stewart’s lease though, and he had decorated the place rather ostentatiously (in my mind)—specially designed silk curtains, bright colors, ornate decorations, a formality to the place.  But over those nine months I learned a lot about the gay community, gays in the priesthood, and the problems of gays had trying to integrate into the Rockford social scene.  I have fond memories of Donald, Stewart’s companion that year.  Donald was 100% female in a man’s body, a neurotic bundle of energy, very effeminate, hysterically funny, an off the wall female brain.  He drank a 12-pack of Coke and smoked two packs of Marlboros a day.  He was bouncing off the walls by the time I saw him in the late afternoon.  He was between apartments and in financial distress.  Stewart asked if I would mind if Donald stayed a while.  I told him “no problem”, and besides, he did all the cooking, cleaning, and ironing.  I found Donald’s antics hilariously funny.  He referred to himself as a “tacky gay” guy.  In reality, Donald was very lonely.  I felt sorry for him.  Of course, the church administration knew nothing about Stewart and Donald.  They lived in the closet.  Occasionally during that year, a parent would approach me, maybe tangentially or sometimes stumbling with words, about  Stewart.  “Is he gay?” They would ask.  I always responded the same way, very politely and casually, that I saw nothing to suggest that kind behavior.

My teaching load was a burden.  I had more than 40 students in each of two 8th grade classrooms, one of which was my homeroom.  That’s right…80+ papers to grade for every assignment.  The other eighth grade teacher, a sister of the ____________ Order, suggested I start out as a disciplinarian.  I could relax later, she said.  I managed to keep the class under control and taught math and science rather haphazardly, slightly out of kilter in order to save my energy and have time to grade papers.  I gave my students plenty of time to work on projects and group activities.  I rarely used lesson plans.  They were there only if a substitute teacher was needed.  I was pretty spontaneous in the classroom, organizing activities to avoid talking too much and too often.  I recall writing lesson plans after the fact when I heard an inspector from the Rockford Diocese was scheduled to visit.  It was all pretty ridiculous in retrospect.  My foremost task was to keep too many 8th graders in order.  I managed to accomplish that.  I herded my homeroom class to mass at the parish church next door every morning, led them in the Pledge of Allegiance, and then orchestrated an exhausting day of work.  I’m glad I was only 22 years old and had enough energy to do that, although I no doubt caught every virus circulating through the hallways and lurking on every doorknob and banister.  I learned a lot of classroom tricks to survive and ended the year in one piece.

By the Fall of 1968, my Karmann Ghia was playing out.  The body was rusting away and the soft top leaked through torn and aging fabric, but it still had the strength for one more road trip. During winter break in January, 1969, my friend Terry and I drove to Duluth, Minnesota for a long weekend vacation.  Terry had received a BFA degree at the University of Minnesota campus there.  A winter trip north to Minnesota sounds insane as I think of it now, but we left Dekalb on a Friday evening headed toward the Wisconsin border in my Karmann Ghia.  It was one of the last road trips I made in that vehicle.  We were thankful for the gas heater since VW engine heaters back then were worthless.  Northern Illinois was dark by 5 pm.  We intended to drive all night and reach our destination by morning.  It was a 450-mile slog, mostly on 2-lane roads.  The highway surface was clear and dry, but snow had fallen recently, and the white landscape around us offered some background light.

Illinois highway 47 is a straight shot to the Wisconsin border, mostly flat with undulating low hills and swales, part of a broad post glacial outwash plain.  Traffic was light, and we listened to WLS radio in Chicago as the miles rolled by.  Somewhere north of Lily Lake a set of headlights appeared in front of us, maybe a quarter mile ahead as a vehicle crested a low hill.  As the vehicle approached, another vehicle suddenly entered our lane from behind the headlights in an attempt to pass.  Reflexively, I turned to the right onto the shoulder in a sudden, instinctive move.  We slowed, jarred by the bumpy, rutted gravel and managed to stop along the side of the highway.  Neither vehicle slowed, stopped, or veered as they passed.  Both continued on as if nothing happened.  Terry and I had just survived a near-fatal accident by a split second, missing a vehicle in our lane by 10’s of feet.  Frankly, it was miraculous.  We sat in silence for a several minutes, mutually amazed by our luck, fate, and an untimely end narrowly avoided.

It started snowing and the temperature plummeted later that night somewhere in central Wisconsin.  A loud thump against the passenger door jolted us into conciousness.  I pulled over and stopped.  As the engine idled, we looked around the frozen landscape but could see nothing.  It was probably a deer, but we couldn’t find the victim.  It was far too cold to look for more than a minute.  We continued on into the night and reached Duluth by breakfast time.  On inspection, I found a foot-wide dent on the passenger door.  I’ve always wondered what happened to that deer.  We enjoyed a stay in Duluth for 2-3 days, but the temperature never rose above -10 F.  The rest of the trip was thanklfully uneventful.

Early that spring, one of my 8th grade fathers offered me his 1960 Corvair for about $200.  I liked the car, a black hardtop rear engine coup.  It rode well, was sporty and fast, and I trusted the owner.  He was the father of one of my best students.  Corvairs were notorious for bad seals, although I didn’t know that at the time.  This one was no exception.  I ‘ve often wondered if the parent knew about the seriousness of the problem.  He didn’t drive it much, but when I acquired it, the odometer went into overdrive.  I commuted back and forth to Dekalb the rest of that year and took several regional trips in it occasionally adding transmission fluid.  St Bernadette School was just too structured and discipline oriented.  I guess that’s why 100+ sets of parents sent their kids there.  By Spring 1969, I had landed a job at St Bernard’s in Watertown, Wisconsin.  I just couldn’t find a teaching position closer to Dekalb that year.  Thousands of young men were trying to beat the draft, and I wasn’t the only (ex) Catholic trying to maintain a teaching deferment.  I had applied to several schools around the northern Illinois region but my only offer was in Wisconsin about 100 miles north of the NIU campus.

Grad school was on the top of my docket during the summer of 1969, but I first needed to complete geology summer camp, without which I couldn’t formally enter the NIU graduate program.  I had been accepted into the four week field class at SDSMT earlier that year.  It was scheduled to run from mid July to mid August.  I had talked to Dr Mac about it, and he assured me that I could get into the NIU masters program as long as I completed field camp.  My grades were satisfactory.  During June I worked for Dr Ira Odom, the clay mineralogist, preparing and running clay samples on the department’s x-ray diffractometer.  I became familiar with x-ray data and interpreting clay compositions from the output.  I can’t remember the details of his project, but I think he was working on clay cements in sandstones and the evolution of porosity and permeability.   Petroleum companies were interested in this kind of information because oil and gas migrated through permeable sandstones to reach a reservoir.

I was still commuting from Geneva daily in my leaky Corvair.  By early July, just ahead of my drive to Rapid City, the transmission seals were leaking badly.  I was adding transmission fluid once a week.  Replacing the seal was out of the question—far too expensive on my limited budget.  I did arrive safely although transmission fluid may have cost as much as gas on the 900-mile drive.  I headed to the Rapid City Chevy dealer when I arrived, doubtful that I would qualify for a loan on a new vehicle.  I was surprised when the dealer approved a loan for me on the spot, and with a minimal down payment and trade in, I drove away the next day in my first new car, a green 1968 Chevelle two-door V-8 with a 3-speed floor shift.  Apparently, used Corvairs were popular in Rapid City, and I was happy to relinquish it, although I can’t recall how much they gave me for it.  I was relieved to be rid of another guzzler—in this case, a transmission fluid guzzler.  I was ready for field camp.

The program consisted of classroom and field problems in and around the Black Hills.  It was taught by two professors, one from Mines and another from the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, each of whom brought about a dozen students, all senior geology majors.  To round things out, a lone out-of-stater, a student from Northern Illinois University, formerly from Mines, attended the class.  My experience was challenging but enjoyable and the students were friendly.  I particularly liked the geologic mapping exercise at Bear Butte in the northeastern foothills where we worked in teams of four using plane tables to map rock units, faults, and folds.  It was my first stint at geologic mapping.  I loved the hiking and intellectual challenge—a genuine 3-D earth puzzle.  Four of us carpooled daily to the mapping site from Rapid City, sharing gas expenses.  I stayed with my friend Frank for the month.  It was good to see his family again and share in good times.  The class went to the central Black Hills and identified metamorphic rock suites using mineral assemblages.  We measured stratigraphic sections from the sedimentary column west of town and surveyed an abandoned gold mine near Lead.  My learning curve was steep but I loved the class and the entire experience, even though I received the only B+ out of 24 or so classmates.  As it turned out, each professor graded his own students, but decided to flip a coin (as I later found out) to identify who would evaluate me—the SDSMT professor lost the flip.  It was all OK because I sensed an inner awakening, probably my most important experience gained from the class, a powerful feeling of exhilaration and satisfaction, of being in the outdoors, in the mountains with wind, sky, and geography trying to solve an intellectual problem.  I was hooked on working in beautiful places!

I hated to leave Rapid City but had to return to Illinois and then to Wisconsin where my new teaching job awaited me.  Frank and Arron also informed me that they had been drafted into the army and would likely head to Vietnam after boot camp.

Watertown, Wisconsin

I felt some satisfaction that I was inching toward an MS degree with field methods and advanced stratigraphy under my belt, but I needed to identify an advisor, complete six more classes, and write a thesis.  But first I had to find a place to live in Watertown and meet my new coworkers.  At the time, Watertown was a small, populist thinking, agricultural community of about 5,000 souls too far from Milwaukee to be considered a suburb.  It was known for turkey farming, harsh winters, and 8-ounce 5 cent beers. Someone at school recommended I rent a bedroom in a house near the school owned by a retired woman, a friendly Lutheran widow in her 70’s.  She rented a second room to a math teacher at Watertown High School, a serious fellow in his late 20’s who commuted to Milwaukee on the weekends.  It was a successful 9-month arrangement.  My schedule usually involved returning to my classroom after dinner, where I prepared lesson plans, graded papers, and invented numerous ways to keep my 7th and 8th graders busy.  I would occasionally drive north about 10 miles to a country bar near Juneau, Wisconsin. The bartender and I chatted about local politics over beers.  We commiserated since I was a bartender myself.  I occasionally drove to Oconomowoc—I love the name of that town—about 15 miles south of Watertown to ice skate or share a beer with a bartender there.  For some reason I have a very clear memory of filling my Chevelle with gas there one evening during a “gas war” where local dealers were trying to underbid each other.  I remember paying 22 cents for a gallon of gas.

Nearly every weekend, I headed to Dekalb, a 100 mile one-way trip (2 hours) and stayed at Irene’s or with my friend, Terry, in Sycamore.  My weeks were busy, but thankfully, I had fewer students that year, maybe 30 in each class, and far more progressive nuns to work with.  I was the only male teacher in the school and had no trouble keeping order in my classroom, thanks to my vast experience from the previous year.  I taught math and science primarily to 7th and 8th graders but also taught physical education and art.  I also managed the religious education program for high schoolers in the parish, which in retrospect seems utterly outrageous to me.  I’ll get back to that shortly.

I developed a close friendship with a family in Watertown, the Heinens, who had several children at St. Bernard’s that year.  Bob and Phyllis were generous, understanding, and outspoken liberals, very principled in their views, and minority players in Watertown politics.  They would get pretty frustrated with the narrow-minded thinking in small town Wisconsin.  I would visit them in the evenings and discuss community and school issues, occasionally spilling over to national and global stuff.  They were great thinkers and became my Watertown family.  I totally trusted them and always felt as though I could speak in confidence there.  Bob was a salesman for a major pharmaceutical company and worked long hours.  I think his territory included most of the state.  Phyllis was a stay at home mom, busy raising the family, although their kids were exceptionally well behaved, bright, and performed well academically.  Barb in 8th grade and Pam in 7th, were at the top of my two classes.

I had a busy academic year and attempted to make my classes as interesting as possible so the kids were motivated to study science and math.  I had no serious discipline problems and generally had the backing of my parents, but I had felt from the beginning of the year that a faction on the school board did not approve of me and may have wanted to hire someone else.  Once, after report cards were sent home, an angry father entered the building in the evening yelling ”where’s Dyman”—everyone knew I spent my evenings there—and barged into my classroom without even knocking.  He demanded to know why his son received a D in one of my subjects—what a shithead.  He didn’t even say hello to me.  I stood up from my desk, admittedly nervous, after all I was just a 23 year old draft dodger.  I looked directly at him and said that his son was goofing off in class, wasn’t paying attention, was a minor discipline problem, and deserved what he got.  I intimated that it was not polite to barge into teacher’s classrooms.  I was preparing for the inevitable punch in the nose, but almost fell over anyway when he apologized and said that he would address his son’s problems.  He then sat down and we talked for an hour.  I never had trouble with his son again.  That parent was a member of the Board and may have initially been against hiring me—local politics.

My greatest achievement that year was pushing the envelope on high school religious education.  I had suggested to the committee that we prepare a short list of religious, social, and political topics for the students to consider, and then develop a program to include speakers and panels on the various subjects.  Students would then form discussion groups and talk about the issues based on what they learned in the large group event.  This seemed to me to be a more interesting way to study important issues of the material and spiritual world than to delve into traditional catholic doctrine.  I no longer remember the full list of topics presented to the students, but one topic stood out above all the others in popularity—freedom and authority.  Some parents objected to having students choose the topics for study, but I loved it, and the committee and I organized a 3-4 week program around that subject.  One must remember that it was late 1969, draft cards were burned, ROTC buildings were trashed, and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was active in Madison, Wisconsin, leading riots against an unpopular war.  Next Spring, Sterling Hall at UWM would explode and Kent State would erupt.

I recommended that we host an evening panel discussion on freedom and authority, open it up to the entire parish, and secure the most well known speakers available.  I started by making a Who’s Who list of potential speakers covering the political spectrum, and of course I was conspiring with local friends like the Heinens and our Pastor, Father Vince Tillman, a liberal priest from Notre Dame.  We ultimately decided on four panelists, two at each end of the political spectrum and two closer to the center, on the right and left.  We settled on a retired army general from Milwaukee, the head of SDS at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a Democrat state legislator, and a successful Republican businessman well known in the state.  Someone suggested a popular political science teacher at the high school to moderate the program—a wise choice.  Each speaker would make introductory remarks, then respond to specific questions from the moderator (preselected), and finally the panelists would face questions from the audience.  Students would of course be listening and taking notes so they could address the subject in later discussion groups.  I don’t think I fully grasped what I was doing with this politically volatile subject in a conservative community—it was fun though in retrospect.  I was barely an adult myself.  We advertised the event to be held in the church (with a seating capacity of 250), addressed logistical details, and waited nervously for the evening to arrive.

The church was packed.  I sat alone in the back pew in my sport coat and tie.  I can’t remember all of the images from that evening but I was apprehensive, worried I was the fall guy to be tarred and feathered, or at least kicked out of town.  I could tell immediately that some folks were unhappy, lots of concern about the event, especially with an SDS panelist, a communist agitator addressing their children.  As expected, each panelist did a commendable job in his introductory remarks.  The army general shared his authoritarian, paternalistic view about stopping communism and protecting society from evil.  I think the audience expected the SDS representative to perform badly, but he did extremely well.  He was a PhD candidate in philosophy and may have been the best of the lot in supporting his views of freedom from an authoritarian government, the war, white privilage, and the excesses of capitalism.  I liked the Democrat legislator, who could hold his own, and the businessman did his capitalist thing.  It was a great choice, pretty much covering the political spectrum.  There were some great questions from the audience, all looking at aspects of this politically charged topic, obviously a range of viewpoints, which was good for the kids to see. But some folks were angry.  One question (or rather comment) in particular was the most unsettling, but an expected query.  “Who’s responsible for this program?” A male voice from near the front said, of course implying that it was terrible to subject our children to this display of anti-American behavior.  A beautiful question of course, summing up the whole shebang, not because of any answer, but because of the question itself.  I fidgeted in the back row but was saved by our moderator who brilliantly explained that students would absorb all of this material, break down into discussion groups in subsequent weeks, and talk about the issues from the panel discussion.  It was important for them to see all sides, he continued, implying of course that we live in a free society.  Beautiful!

There was some static after the event, but it died down pretty quickly, and I wasn’t feathered or fired.  Discussion leaders informed me that the small group evenings went very well.  I doubt that I would have been fired.  The school board would not have renewed my contract.  Maybe the experience did the parish some good.

I was hoping to get through the year without more excitement, but that was not to be.  St Bernard’s had a second priest, an assistant pastor, a very likeable guy in his 50’s, Father Rob Duncan, who had just returned from a 30-year stint saving souls in Pakistan, another Jesuit from Notre Dame in Indiana.  St. Bernard’s was his first stateside assignment, a transition position meant to be an easy job for him as he approached retirement.  I suspected that Father Rob was gay but thought it wouldn’t impact our personal relationship—occasional drinking or dinner buddies escaping Watertown for Madison or Milwaukee to relax from the grind.  On one occasion (I remember this very distinctly), while we were returning from an evening event, maybe Madison, I was driving my Chevelle while holding my right hand on the stick shift when Rob suddenly placed his left hand over mine.  I think I said it aloud: “Rob, we can’t do this”.  I explained that I was 100 percent heterosexual—I liked women—and we had to be JUST friends.  Of course, that was a false hope because he admitted that he loved me and just couldn’t control his feelings.  It wasn’t business as usual anymore.

A few days later I told Rob that he needed to seek help from the Jesuits in Indiana.  Good luck because I was a 23-year old male teacher, he was a 50-something priest, and we were in a conservative parish in the middle of Wisconsin.  Very bad things could happen here, I said.  We had some bad moments and Rob was not doing well emotionally.  He was fumbling in his parish responsibilities and was distraught.  I tried to be easy on him.  I confided to the Heinens but just didn’t have the maturity or skills to deal with the problem adequately.  I went to Father Vince—I had no other choice.  Ultimately, Rob was recalled to Notre Dame and entered a therapy program.  The poor guy spent his career out of the country, a suppressed homosexual, never involved in a two-way loving relationship.  I was becoming pretty soured on the structure of the priesthood.  I saw Rob once more, in Geneva, the following summer.  He called my parent’s home and asked for me saying that he was passing through the area.  He came by the next day and we went for a ride.  I was pretty firm in reiterating my thoughts and feelings on the subject that we not see each other.  I never heard from Rob again.

The school year continued without further incidents for me, but my decision had been made even before the Christmas holiday, to move back to the Dekalb area to complete my degree.  I contacted the Rockford Diocese after the holidays—Dekalb was in the Diocese—and applied to several schools nearby.  I now had an advantage and good recommendations from principals and fellow teachers and landed a job teaching math and science to 5th and 6th graders at St. Patrick’s School in Rochelle, an easy 17-mile commute from campus.  I assured the school board that I would take education classes toward my teaching certificate.  I was also in a position to take geology classes, at least in the evenings and on the weekends.  Coincidently, the St Bernard’s school board offered to renew my contract for the next school year at a salary of $7,000, a $2,500 increase.  Apparently, the anti-Dyman contingent left the board, changed their minds, or were again overruled.  I politely declined the offer.

Dekalb and Rochelle, Illinois

1970 began with another opportunity.  I was temporarily living with my parents in Geneva when I answered an ad in the Dekalb Chronicle for a handy man/manager position near campus.  Drew Fanlow, a local rental manager and real estate broker was in need of someone to clean vacated apartments and make minor repairs and upgrades to the units when needed.  Responsibilities included painting, cleaning, trash removal, and minor repairs.  I called him to arrange an interview and actually got the job.  Mr. Fanlow was good to work for, but he hated to be called “sir”, maybe because of his military background—he may have been in WW-II and had a prosthesis—I wondered how he lost a leg but never found out.  Mr. Fanlow also had a 2-bedroom one bath apartment for rent in the basement level of one of his buildings, a stone’s throw from campus and a few short blocks from Davis Hall, the rock-faced fortress of a building housing the earth science department.  I jumped at the opportunity, partly because there was a catch, an added financial benefit.  The building was a six-unit, tan brick structure mostly full of married graduate students.  I would manage the building by making minor repairs and cleaning community areas in exchange for a rental reduction.  The basement unit had a concrete staircase with a flood drain at the bottom next to the front door.  Apparently, the drain was inadequate, and during heavy summer rains water would leak into the apartment.  I would receive a free month’s rent when this happened.  I was a bit concerned about this at first, but realized a significant benefit during the next year when the apartment flooded three times.  It was worth the price of a mop and pail.

To save even more money, I posted an ad for a roommate—a major mistake.  I don’t remember his name but I do clearly recall his bad habits: greasy fingerprints on my records, dirty dishes in the kitchen, rumpled clothes everywhere, for starters.  He was polite and friendly, but generally an insensitive business major from Chicago, a severely lactose intolerant, kind of a spaced out guy.  We were the odd couple.  The final straw came after about two months into the arrangement, late one evening when I returned and needed to use the bathroom.  It was not available because he was in the tub with a woman he invited to the apartment.  I had no problem with this form of entertainment, but was really pissed.  I didn’t care what he did in his bedroom, but we had only one bathroom and needed to share it.  He agreed to leave and soon found another apartment.  He owed me a month’s rent, but I didn’t care.

I signed up for only one class that summer, the foremost class in elementary and secondary education—educational psychology.  I was forewarned about the ed department and its course content from Irene and her friends, but it took only a few minutes into the first lecture for their comments to sink in.  The instructor, an ABD grad student on the verge of receiving his doctorate in education, Mr. ___________, informed us that we were to call him Dr. ___________ when told to do so.  The class outline was total hogwash.  I was seething by the end of the hour and rushed over to the registration area where I dropped ed. psych. and added another class, teaching methods in mathematics.  Rochelle never mentioned which classes I needed to take first, and I knew that I would only be teaching for the duration of the draft.  The methods class was a relief, taught by a practical instructor who offered great ideas about teaching math.

The summer of 1970 was fun, but many details are lost to me more than 40 years later.  I cultivated many friends at the university, and was enjoying Dekalb.  Dekalb was never an attractive community, actually a bit grungy, a typical Midwestern farm town with a large university built in the middle.  Some farmers were hard working entrepreneurs but exhibited some disdain for the university.  Let’s just say that they shook their heads and tolerated the students.  

Irene and I decided to take the big step and marry that year.  Irene was graduating with her elementary education degree and secured a teaching job in Ashton, Illinois, a small farming community about 15 miles west of Rochelle.  We found a small upstairs apartment there above a two-car garage.  The owners lived next door, a retired couple in their 70’s.  It seemed to me that everyone in Ashton was over 70.  Ashton was so small it didn’t even qualify for an exit on the new Illinois Tollway.  But it was perfect for us.  We both had jobs and were financially stable.  The plan was to remain there until I finished my MS program.

I hung out at Irene’s parents farm that summer before moving to Ashton.  Her parents were wonderful people and considered me a part of the family already, which was no small task since there were 13 children, from Louie (about my age) to Aaron who was about three at the time.  Irene and I would drive out to the farm, schmooze a bit, maybe stay for dinner, and later return to town.  Irene’s father made his own wine, a delicious red concoction similar to a smooth pinot noir, but he could barely cook a hot dog, or so he said.  I was astounded at the amount of food cooked for a single meal at the farm, occasionally running down to the basement myself to lug up a 7 lb pot roast or a few chickens.  The farm had a large vegetable garden, a practical necessity, full of tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, onions, potatoes and of course sweet corn.  Sweet corn was my favorite.  At dinner time in late July, the youngest kids  were sent out to pick and shuck corn.  Within minutes the bright yellow ears would be resting in a huge pot of boiling water.  Irene’s dad hated store-bought corn and often said that if it wasn’t in the pot within minutes of picking, it should be pitched.  I loved talking to him.  He was always ready and willing to discuss any subject.  Opinionated yes, but always logical and inciteful.  I remember going on with him about marijuana one day.  He agreed that the marijuana laws were ridiculous.  He and his brothers grew hemp during the war to make rope for the navy and knew a lot about this poor cousin to modern cannabis.  There was still a lot of “volunteer” hemp growing along gravel roads in the county, he said, and it was hilarious to watch college kids driving around looking for “junk weed”  to smoke.  The family was pretty progressive in many ways, though Republicans of course, and understanding on social and political issues.

My favorite bar in Dekalb was on the wrong side of the tracks, actually next to the tracks where Illinois highway 38 (Old Alternate US-30) and the Chicago and Northwestern Railway tracks met at an angle of about 30 degrees.  It was a long intersection and a busy track, with hundred-car freight trains rumbling through town every 20 -30 minutes.  In the narrow triangular space on the east side of the intersection stood a jigsaw piece of a building, fitting snugly to within 30 feet of the tracks.  The _____________ was a grad student hangout, dark and friendly inside, peanut shells on the floor, great juke box music, cheap pitchers, and that friendly smell of stale beer.  My favorite table was the one next to the emergency exit at the pointed end of the triangle facing the tracks and oncoming trains.  After a few pitchers, our favorite entertainment was to anticipate and experience the cacophony of the trains.  Staring out the window of the emergency door, we would see the lights in the distance, then the slowly intensifying rumble and loud whistle, and then the crescendo as two or three 40 mph diesel locomotives passed within 30 feet of our table   The entire building shook as the engines passed, then the click-click and whoosh of the cars as the train headed east toward Chicago.  Conversations immediately resumed and the anticipation of the next freight train required at least one more pitcher.

The end of August brought an end to the music.  I had completed one class toward my teaching certificate and convinced my new employer I was serious about elementary school teaching.  My first year at St. Pat’s was fun.  Classes were smaller (25 students), and I taught primarily 5th and 6th graders, an easier group with fewer discipline problems, kids still excited about science.  The school had ceased to offer 7th and 8th grade classes due to money and enrollment.  That fall, I received a significant and very welcomed donation of science equipment from a local company, lab supplies for chemistry and physics.  It allowed me to prepare demonstrations otherwise not possible.  I started a recycling program that fall too, probably the first in the area, but it only lasted a year.  At the time there were few outlets for glass, plastic, and cardboard, although aluminum paid our expenses.  The father of one of my students had a trucking company and generously volunteered a truck to haul glass and aluminum to a processing plant south of Rochelle. I think the kids enjoyed it, and maybe, it ultimately encouraged them to continue the process later as adults.

A single incident marred my first year at St Pat’s, one involving my principal.  She was in her mid 30’s and part of the newer generation of nuns, more socially and politically liberal, at least peripherally attaching themselves to the women’s liberation movement. There were other young nuns on the staff, all seemingly liberal, who wore the newer loosely fitting habit.  The incident began rather simply and innocently.  Somehow the marijuana issue came up after school one day.  I volunteered that I thought weed should be legal, was pretty harmless, and was no worse than alcohol.  I thought my comment benign because she was a drinker and openly receptive to liberal political viewpoints.  A few days later the pastor asked me to visit him in his office.   I could tell that Fr.  ______________ was uncomfortable talking about the subject but asked me if I smoked grass.  I told him that I did not use marijuana.  The context of the question let me off the hook as I was not a user—I had only tried it a few times with friends.  I explained to him that in my opinion the pot laws were outdated and outrageous, but that was my personal opinion, and the subject would never come up in class anyway.  I told him that I represented the church as a teacher and was well aware of the church stand on the issue.  He was satisfied with my explanation, and the matter was dropped.  I was absolutely furious with Sr. ____________ and cooperated with her as needed, but my conversations with her were minimal.  She left St. Pats after the first semester, and I suspect she had problems with some of the other nuns and also with our pastor, but I was never aware of any divisiveness, nor did I ask.

The second semester brought a new principal to St. Pat’s, a lay principal, Rod Bates, an NIU graduate student in education and administration working on his doctorate.  He was smart, quick-witted, rational, and a nice guy, from somewhere near St. Louis, I think, a hard worker and very understanding.  He actually suggested that I teach half time in order to finish my classes.  He also commuted back and forth himself to finish his doctorate in education.  As I recall, we alternated our schedules and shared some administrative responsibilities at school.  The arrangement opened the door for me to finish my degree.

I lined up a course list for the next school year including geomorphology, hydrogeology, stratigraphy, and geophysics.  Stan Frost readily agreed to be my advisor, even suggesting a thesis problem in micropaleontology.  I’ll get to that in a minute.  So I dug in and by September 1971 started my push.  For the most part, my classes were enjoyable.  Geomorphology was taught by Ron Flemal, a young professor who made the class enjoyable.  I had learned a lot about the landforms of Illinois as a kid in Geneva, but Dr Flemal was a quantitative geomorphologist and included statistical techniques in the class that could be used elsewhere in other disciplines including paleontology.   I also took a class in quantitative techniques from Dr Bill Keighin, a sedimentary geologist in the department.  Bill later left NIU and worked at the US Geological Survey in Denver in my future branch.  My only disappointment was geophysics.  It should have been taught by Lyle McGinnis but he headed to Antarctica that year on a sabbatical leave to drill wells in the dry valleys there.  I suffered the fall semester with a Chinese fellow, a sabbatical replacement for Lyle.  He was probably a good teacher but his heavily accented English was hard to understand, and he was not receptive to repeated questions on what may have been trivial issues for him.  He was nice enough, but I got pretty frustrated and wound up with a C in the class.  It was SDSMT déjà vu all over again.  C grades are not good in grad school, but the department said nothing about my dismal showing, and my graduate level grade point was still well over 3.0 anyway.

The meat of my work was micropaleontology under the guidance of Dr Stan Frost.  He had completed his dissertation at the University of Illinois on Tertiary microfossils from the Chiapas region of Mexico.  His micropaleontology class that fall was an eye opener for me and created a lifelong interest in microfauna.  In early 1970, Stan had attended a field conference on Isla de Margarita, Venezuela, where Eocene reef strata were exposed.  He returned to Dekalb with two fist-sized chunks of Eocene limestone from the beaches of Margarita, one chunk for me and one for Jim Catlin, a fellow grad student.  The two hand samples contained the skeletal remains of thousands of tiny (less than a millimeter in diameter) foraminifers.  Forams are single celled multi-chambered carbonate -secreting zooplankton used extensively by petroleum companies when drilling in certain regions to precisely determine the age of rocks penetrated.  They come up the well bore undamaged with drilling mud and are identified by qualified paleontologists to reveal whether or not the anticipated petroleum reservoir has been penetrated, a rather important decision, especially in offshore wells on expensive multimillion dollar drilling platforms.  They may be benthonic (living on the substrate) or planktonic (living in the water column) and evolved quickly during Tertiary time.  Forams are fascinating creatures.  They are morphologically diverse and complex and are hard to study because an overabundance of names have been applied to some of them.  Stan suggested that Jim and I select two well known species and analyze a large number of tests (individual fossils) to determine the range of variation in a population.  Is the population representative of the range of variation of the entire species as previously described?  More than 20 different names had accumulated over the last 100 years for my species, what was officially called Lepidocyclina pustulosa.  Our hunch was that many micropaleontologists were “splitters”.  They introduced new names for critters that were probably just variants of a single species, maybe foram youngsters or geezers, or just genetic mutants—foram psychos!  We were “lumpers”.  An analysis of a large population from a single time and place might sort out some of the problems of variation and nomenclature.

I was pretty excited about my project, especially because I would use statistics and computers to help me establish the range of variation in L. pustulosa.  Computers and quantitative methods in geology were new in the early 1970’s, and I thought we were at the cutting edge of paleontologic research.  There was a catch—there always is one.  My work would be very labor intensive because the only way to analyze the physical variation in these tiny benthic critters was to thin section each of them to observe their fossilized interior.  The procedure involved (1) separating the tests from their carbonate rock matrix using a mild acid bath, (2) mounting each test on a glass slide with a temperature sensitive epoxy adhesive, (3) grinding the millimeter-sized fossil with corundum powder on a glass plate until half of the critter was ground away, and (4) re-melting the epoxy on the slide and flipping the fossil over to restart the grinding process.  The point was to preserve a micron-thick section of the very middle of the fossil interior including the initial embryonic chambers so the entire growth history of the test could be observed under a microscope using reflected light—easier said than done.  Another catch was that L. pustulosa was shaped like a tiny grain of wheat with pointy ends, not spherical but elongated requiring that both “equatorial” and “polar” or vertical thin sections were needed to analyze the interior.  Imagine holding a test vertically with a needle-sharp metal pick hoping the epoxy would harden before your hand started shaking.  The most common error though was to grind right through the embryonic chambers and destroy the sample.

We finally settled on about 1,000 tests, a statistically significant population to study in detail, 500 equatorially thin-sectioned tests and 500 vertically thin-sectioned tests, several thousand hours of work as it turned out.  It took me about a week to learn how to mount and properly grind a good equatorial section, ruining many in the process, but I soon mastered the technique and could complete an equatorial section in 45 minutes. The vertical ones were harder, and as you might imagine, took a bit longer.  In reality, I probably thin sectioned close to 1,500 tests, but only 1,000 were useable.

I had already developed a list of variables to measure on each specimen, physical attributes of size and shape, chamber counts, chamber wall thicknesses, and a host of indices that might represent to the true genetic variation in my population.  I settled on about 35 variables for both equatorial and vertical sections, a process obviously completed using a microscope, micrometer, and a steady eye—many more hours of work.  I periodically photographed specimens for my thesis and for 35 mm slides used in oral presentations.

The final step in my study was to analyze the data—two 500 X 35 matrices containing the morphologic variation in my sample.  It would be essentially impossible to do this without the aid of computers and statistical techniques.  The human eye and brain just can’t process spreadsheets of this magnitude without some quantitative crutch.  I was very fortunate to enter the ground floor of mathematical geology in 1971 at NIU, first with Ron Flemal and his understanding of multivariate statistics, including both factor and cluster analysis, and with large mainframe computers required to run the programs. I used some early statistical programs from the biomedical field, originally developed by psychologists to understand behavioral difference in people.  This was the Precambrian age of computers when huge gym-sized mechanical devices with elaborate cooling systems and full time staff were hidden away in some remote part of the campus.  I used IBM punch cards to enter the thousands of data points from my matrices and submitted “batch” jobs to a geeky guy at the computer center in a building across campus.  I’d wait 24 hours and return to the computer center to find that one punch card (out of 1,000 or more) had an error requiring a re-submittal and another 24-hour wait.  This was probably the most frustrating part of my work, but it finally worked, and the fun part of my study began—interpretation!

As it turned out, I could have completed the study with fewer variables, but I didn’t know that when I made my measurements.  There were some important variables and some less important ones, and the variation was pretty continuous over a broad range of test sizes and shapes, a perfect scenario for “lumpers” like me.  I’d like to think that I made a small contribution to paleontology, although today one needs to study carnivorous dinosaurs to make the big time.  Some years later I published the data spreadsheets as a U.S. Geological Open-File Report.

A non-geologist might read this discussion and easily question my sanity.  It sounds ridiculous to study morphological variation in a huge population of 50 million-year-old benthic microfossils from the coast of Venezuela as the youthful Atlantic Ocean was widening, slowly travelling away from Africa on the South American plate.  My work was a labor of love.

My thesis committee included Stan Frost (as head) and Ron Flemal, Clarence Casella, and Sam Goldich as readers.  Jim Catlin and I defended our theses with back-to-back presentations in the Department of Geology in September 1972.  We had a full house since the semester had just started.  I wore a sport coat and tie and fielded some good questions, but the subject was obscure enough that few people knew much about our fossils or about multivariate statistics.  The entire faculty and most of the grad students were there, and Sam Goldich told the group he was impressed with our work, which represented a new era in geologic analysis, referring of course to computer and statistical methods.

Sam told me I needed to go to Houston to find a job in the “oil patch”, the endearing term used for the petroleum industry.  I wasn’t particularly enamored with “Big Oil”, but needed to gain some professional experience, and Houston was the place to go.  My PhD would have to wait.  Irene and I packed our minimal baggage, said our goodbyes to family and friends, and headed south in our new Chevette.

Little did we know that we were driving directly into a job market in the throws of collapse as the 1973-1975 recession reared its ugly head.  America was only a year away from the Arab oil embargo, inflation was headed for double digits, and the energy sector was in trouble.  It was a great time to move to Houston.