(upbeat music)
- Okay, I took an introductory
course in the fall of '63,
in my sophomore year,
and I just fell in love with it.
I had no idea what geology was,
I had signed up, I started
off as a history major,
at Del Mar,
and then I was taking a biology class,
and my professor was so good,
so was my history professor,
but he was even better.
So I moved to biology,
and then I took a marine biology course,
and I loved it, so I
switched to marine biology.
And as a requisite for biology,
I was told I had to take chemistry,
and that was fine, I
signed up for chemistry,
and at registration
someone said, oh my god,
you have the German
woman chemistry teacher
who flunks out the most students.
And I had had almost no chemistry,
at Engleside High School.
And I thought, I think I'll wait,
and take chemistry some other time.
And I asked someone at registration,
what's another science I could take,
where they have a really good teacher,
because that was one of
the things I really liked,
was to find out who the best teacher was,
and then go with that class.
And so I,
asked someone and they said, well,
geology is supposed to
have a good teacher.
And it said, well, what is geology?
I had never even heard the
term at Engleside High School,
and this person said, well,
geology is like, studying
rocks and fossils,
things like that.
And I went, oh, well the one time,
that I got out of the
flat, flat, flat land,
of the Gulf Coast, we went to Big Bend,
and I was just fascinated with these rocks
that sparkled and made
mountains, and things like that,
and I thought, well, I'd like to know,
a little bit about rocks.
So I signed up and went
to the geology class,
and Mr., Dr., Mr. Hugh Doney,
he didn't have his PhD at the
time, he was working on it,
was our instructor, used
to walk into the classroom,
with a great big cigar, and,
and, put it down on the
edge of the eraser board,
and turn around and star speaking to us.
And from the first moment
he started talking,
I was in love with geology
and what he was saying.
That was my sophomore year,
and I took this physical geology course.
At the same time, I was taking, you know,
my marine geology, and, or marine biology.
I,
the second semester, my
last semester at Del Mar,
I took historical
geology, and paleontology,
at the same time, and I was
taking invertebrate, zoology.
Well we got to, phylum
vermes, we got to the worms,
in marine zoology, and there
were thousands of different
classifications of worms.
And I was getting very bored with worms.
And in paleontology,
we covered worms in about three seconds,
five, five seconds, it was like,
phylum vermes, here's a
worm trail, that's it.
And I thought, well
this is real attractive.
Well at the end of the semester,
my professor came to me, and he said,
you know, you are my
best student in geology,
well great, you know.
And he said, is there any chance you would
change your major to geology?
And I said, I've changed
my major twice already,
I'm a little embarrassed about it.
And he said, well,
I have a $700 scholarship,
for my best geology student,
if you were a major,
and I said, oh,
(laughter)
I had been working two to four jobs,
all the way through college,
through my first two
years here at Del Mar,
and also through high school.
So it sounded very appealing
to get this scholarship.
So I said, okay, you've convinced me,
I'll change my major.
And I changed the major, and at that time,
we had our graduation
for our associate degree,
and they had us walk across the stage
by order of, you know, the
size of the scholarship.
And the Janowski Scholarship,
which was given by the Corpus
Christi Geological Society,
was the largest scholarship
handed out at Del Mar,
so I was the grand finale
walking across the stage
at Del Mar for my associate degree,
and got my degree, and got
my scholarship certificate,
and I was coming down off the stage,
and my French teacher, was
at the bottom of the stairs,
and you have to understand,
that I was taking 18 hours,
most of them lab courses,
including French, and working,
and, trying to have a good time.
Going to Hootenannies
and things like that,
(laughter)
and, I never got to the French lab.
I just didn't get there.
I just barely got out of French class.
And my French teacher, Professor Griffis,
was at the bottom of the steps,
when I came off the stage, and she said,
Ms. Rice, I didn't know,
I thought you were stupid.
(laughter)
So I learned a little bit, from that,
when I was teaching geology,
I always tried to find out,
if somebody was really
being dumb in my class,
if it was because they were
working hard in other areas,
or they really were goofing off.
So, so she taught me a lot.
I was able to take that scholarship,
to Colorado State University.
I couldn't go to the
University of Texas at Austin,
because even though Del Mar, at that time,
was the highest rated
junior college in the state,
they would not accept
a bunch of my credits,
and if I went to Texas,
where I was accepted,
but if I went there,
it would take me another year to graduate,
and I only had the
scholarship for two years.
And so, I applied to
Colorado State University,
and the reason I applied there,
is because I had family there,
and I thought I could live
more cheaply with my aunt.
And I got accepted there, and
Colorado State University,
accepted all the credits,
that I earned at Del Mar.
So I was able to go to school there,
and finish the degree in four years.
When I arrived at Colorado State,
the major professor, the
chairman of our department,
called me in right away and said,
in order to get a degree in geology here,
you must take our geology field camp.
And I said that's great,
you know, I can't wait,
that's, that's why I'm here.
And he said, well we don't
allow girls in the field camp.
And, he said, you'll
have to find some place
else to take it.
And I was like, ah, well
that's a chore, and then,
you know, how do you pay for it?
If I can't take it on my regular schedule,
I also had a national defense loan,
to help me through college.
And so, I thought, oh well, you know,
something will happen, I'll manage.
Well, fortunately for me,
at the end of that year,
before I took field camp,
he went on a sabbatical.
And the rest of the faculty,
voted that they wanted to have,
allow women to come in
and, into field camp.
So I got to go.
Now, to be fair, I don't think that
they were all that dedicated
to gender equality.
They knew I could cook, and
they needed a camp cook.
(laughter)
So I was able to earn my
way through field camp,
by cooking over an open fire,
on top of the White River
Plateau, for our field camp.
And it was great fun, I loved it,
the camp cook had a lot of privileges,
that the rest of them didn't have,
like, I got to go to town every week.
And so, that turned out really well.
When I was at Colorado State University,
this was so long ago, that,
we went down to Boulder, the CU campus,
to hear a very outrageous
new theory, in geology,
called continental drift.
And we got down there,
and we got so excited,
and inspired by this wild
concept, continental drift,
with, you know, continents,
slamming into each other,
and nobody had ever heard of such a thing.
So that's how ancient I am.
That was a whole new theory at the time.
Don't want to leave out some of these,
there was a marked difference between me,
and a lot of the guys in our department.
I always wondered how they ended up with
summer jobs, with Texaco or,
Chevron, or some other, Shell
Oil, or something like that,
and I figured well,
they must have family, you know,
in the business, that's
getting them this job.
And my dad, being a shrimper,
certainly didn't have
those kinds of contacts.
The big advantage I had, with
my father being a shrimper,
was when I was in marine
geology, or marine biology,
I'd go out on his shrimp boat with him,
with my little bottles of formaldehyde,
and he'd sweep in the net,
and I'd just start
grabbing squiggly things,
and putting them in formaldehyde,
and I came in with the greatest selection
of invertebrates that anybody
in our class ever had,
including what was called a tinafor,
a jellyfish that has
neon flashes all over it.
But my biology professors were
pretty excited about that.
But that didn't get me any summer jobs,
I was always waiting
tables or babysitting,
or working on tele,
tele dialing, you know,
with people, that annoying thing
that everybody is trying
to sell you something.
Anything I could do,
and it wasn't until years
later, that I realized that,
these guys were going to
interviews with companies,
no one even told me there
was a company representative
on campus, but they were
going to interviews,
and getting these summer jobs,
and getting jobs after school.
But because I was a girl,
people just assumed I
would never go to work,
and never be hired, and no
on even mentioned it to me.
So, I finished my degree,
I was the first woman
to graduate in geology
from Colorado State,
and I thought, well, what do I do now?
No job, no husband, nothing.
And so I thought, well
I'll go to graduate school,
and I'll probably end
up teaching some time.
So I applied at the
University of Texas at Austin,
and went there to graduate school,
and had a marvelous experience there.
My first month or so there,
one of the professors
took me aside and he said,
you know, Robbie, if you
want a job in geology,
you can probably get one if
you major in micropaleontology.
That there are some women
that work in the lab,
in micropaleontology,
and I loved paleontology,
but I didn't like micropaleontology,
and I love stratigraphy and sedimentation,
and all kinds of things, but, I thought,
well, maybe,
maybe I don't need to worry about that.
Maybe I will just get
married and have kids, and,
so why should I gear myself to something
that I didn't think would be very fun.
So I just ignored him, and went on,
and took the classes that
I thought I would like,
and kept going with degree.
And sure enough, by the time
I got my master's degree,
I was married, and I
had a little baby girl,
and, needed to follow
my husband to his job.
And so I did that, and I did
that for a couple of years,
and then I realized, you know,
knowing yourself is a big part of,
getting your career right.
I realized pretty soon that,
I wasn't cut out to be June Cleaver.
I didn't like being at home all the time,
I'd been working since I was
a freshman in high school,
and I missed it, I missed
being out there in the world.
And I missed geology, and so at one point,
I told my husband, I think
I'll try to get a job,
and I'll take my salary and hire a maid
to do all these things I
don't like doing in the house.
(laughter)
And he said, well, if we have a maid,
I don't need a wife.
(laughter)
Well he said that about three times,
I'm sure he was joking,
(laughter)
but it took me about three
times to hear it and go,
hmm, I don't like this, for
other reasons than that.
We ended up separating, and
I went off to find a job,
took my daughter, who's
about two and half years old.
We went to Houston,
and I was able, immediately,
to get a tech job,
with a geophysical company.
Now to tell you, to also date you,
we were doing calculations
on magnetics and gravity,
using these old calculators
where we would type
in the numbers, and then hand crank it,
to give us the addition and
subtraction, and division,
to calculate gravity data.
Then we would punch cards
and put it into a computer
that was the size of the
lady's bathroom in here,
and so things have, you know,
come a long way since those days.
But I was looking for a full time job,
while working at this tech job.
Now there's another point in my life,
where good fortune, came my way.
That was 1973,
and affirmative action had come into place
with Equal Opportunity
Act, with Lyndon Johnson,
and suddenly all the major oil companies,
in the world, or in the U.S. anyway,
had to hire women and
blacks, and Hispanics,
and disabled, and veterans.
So suddenly there was
a great demand for us,
and, that was a very
fortunate time for me,
because here is wanted a job,
and these companies were
being forced to hire people,
that ordinarily they were turning down.
So that was, good fortune, I got a job,
not only got a job, I really
wanted to go back to Colorado,
I loved Colorado, the rocks
are all exposed there,
it's good fun as a geologist.
And I got a job with
Texaco, in Denver, and,
picked up my baby and everything else,
and moved to Denver.
Denver was a wonderful office to work in,
my boss was under no illusions about
why he had to hire me.
And he immediately nicknamed me Token.
(laughter)
And so, when we would have staff meetings,
he would call down the hall, hey Token,
we're having a meeting, time
for you to come in here,
you know, and, I'd trundle
down to the office,
and he called me Token for all four years
that I worked with him.
Fortunately for me, of
course in those days,
there wasn't this thing about harassment,
but, that there is now.
So he could get away with
it, and for me, it was also,
I knew he was kidding and
just trying to lighten
the situation, and I, being
the daughter of a shrimper,
I think, I came into the world with
a born sense of humor.
So I just laughed with him,
when he would do things like this.
And,
at one point, he called in everybody,
because we were going to have a review of
all the disabilities in the, in the staff.
And he had a whole list of disabilities,
you know, and it ranged
from serious ones like,
epilepsy, or something,
to nearsightedness.
And he had to go through
the staff and say,
okay, does anybody have this disability,
does anyone have that, and that way,
we could fill our quotas,
with the government,
for all of these disabilities.
So when he finished the list,
he said, is there any disability here,
that anybody has here, that
hasn't been on this list?
Well we had not, women
were not allowed to go,
out on wells, at that time.
Well setting was only for the guys.
And so I raised my hand, and I said,
yeah, I think I have
a physical disability.
And he said, well what's that, Token?
And I said, well I
apparently don't have the
genitalia I need to well find,
do well site work.
(laughter)
Oh, he couldn't wait to put that down,
and send it up to division,
and said, you know,
we have a major problem
with the women over here
in this division.
And, so we did, eventually
get, sent out on wells,
to the great relief of
all of our colleagues
on the staff, because,
the guys were having to
do all the well site work,
and that meant their
rotations came up quicker,
because two women were
doing any well site work.
And so they were very much relieved,
when we started doing our fair share.
So it worked out just fine.
Another time, my boss,
let me hire a young man to go out
and do some field work
on a project I was doing,
and we liked to, hire
young men in the summer,
as you know.
And so I had this young guy come in,
and I showed him the
project that I had in mind,
it was to go to the San Juan Basin,
and collect samples all around the rim,
to bring back in and look
for better reservoirs.
And I showed him the places to go,
and I gave him a company
car, and expense account,
and sent him on his way, into the field,
and he was going to do
this work for three months,
in the summer.
And after a week or so, he came back in,
and he said, I'm going to have to quit.
And I said, why?
And he said, well I got married,
and my wife doesn't
want me gone all summer.
And I said, you know,
that's the trouble, we
hire you young guys,
and you just get married and quit.
(laughter)
Of course, I'd get
fired for that nowadays,
but in those days, we,
we weren't at that level of pickiness yet.
So, so he,
he did quit, and I didn't
get my field work done
that summer, it went for another year.
Another time, my boss,
who I said, called my Token,
he was wonderful, I mean, he mentored me,
he tutored me, he gave me raises,
he gave me challenging jobs,
he introduced me to so much geology.
I was very frightened of going to work
in the oil business, because
at the University of Texas,
at Austin, I had heard
from many, many professors,
that geologists who went
to work in industry,
were just,
giving up science, and they
were not true academics,
and that they were, really selling out.
And so I, I loved geology,
and I was worried about a
career in the oil business,
thinking, am I going to regret,
doing this, am I going to
be stuck just, you know,
drilling wells and not
learning anything new.
And the minute I got there,
I found that, you know,
several times a year,
you have a new project,
where you are doing research
and you're learning,
everything new, and
creating whole new ideas,
about an area.
It's like doing a master's thesis,
two or three times a year.
I mean it's great, and
you're learning all the time.
And in industry, they are
pushing the edge of our science,
all the time, our technology,
the science, new ideas.
They're, you are successful when you are
the most creative thinker on your staff.
So the whole rumor about
selling out in the science,
because you went to work in industry,
just fell by the wayside,
because it just isn't true.
You, you are,
you're just drug along like
a big ocean wave in science,
when you work in industry,
and it's fantastic.
And of course the technology
today, is so different,
than it was then.
And, and we have so many
more things to work with.
When I was first in the industry,
was when deltas were discovered.
And every delta on the Gulf
Coast was being mapped,
and then they would take this model of
current sedimentation,
and they would apply it
to every sandstone they
saw in the world, you know.
It would just be pressed
into the delta model.
And that was a long time ago.
And it took years before,
then that whole idea was tossed away, and,
and everything became a valley fill,
and then we had systems tracks.
But, that evolution of ideas and thinking,
that I've gone through in 40 years,
has been nothing but exciting.
One of the areas that my
good boss put me into,
was structural plays in
the Rocky Mountain region.
Now I wasn't a structural
geologist at all,
I was a sedimentologist, paleontologist,
and he said, no,
I want you to work on
these mountain fronts.
The Rocky Mountains have all these,
mountain ranges out in the floor land,
of the thrust belt.
And so I started working
on them, and at that time,
we were in a, a big
controversy between people,
we have some A&Mers here,
Dave Sterns, who is with,
who was with Texas A&M, had
this big theory going on,
all of these mountain
ranges being controlled
by vertical uplift.
And that was in disagreement with,
Bob Burgh's theories of
compressional tectonics.
Well my, my boss put me on that project,
and I started looking at these,
mountain fronts, and trying
to determine, you know,
how many of them were
actually compressional,
were thrust faults, and
how many of them were not,
and what evidence we had for them.
I got a lot of seismic at my, in my hands,
to look at that, and I
did a lot of research,
on the the drilling that had been done.
And then I was able to
give talks about this,
and publish it, and,
and you know, that was about
the most exciting thing
I did in structural geology,
and learned so much.
It was like, as I said, doing
a PhD on structural geology.
So that was one of our great projects
that I kept working on
long after I left Texaco.
At one point, my boss
brought me in, and he said,
you know, the demographics of companies,
is going to change drastically,
because we have now
entered a big oil boom,
this is the late '70s, and early '80s.
And he said, have you
noticed how many people,
how many of these guys have quit,
and taken jobs with little independents?
And I said, yeah, you
know, half of our staff.
And he said, well, and
he was preparing me,
because he was actually about to quit,
and take a job with an independent,
(laughter)
and he said, you're going to find that,
these independents don't
have to hire women,
because they're not under,
they're not bound by
affirmative action, where the majors are.
So eventually, the majors
are going to be nothing but
100% women, and the independents
are going to be 100% men.
It's going to be a big change.
I'm like, wow, that's
going to be interesting.
Maybe I could be president of Texaco.
(laughter)
So, but within like two weeks,
I got a call out of the blue,
from an independent
little oil company saying,
will you come to work, you know,
come interview for a job with us?
Now this, these were
really exciting times,
because when you went to
work for an independent,
in those days, in the early '80s,
you got, like double the
salary, you got a company car,
you got an expense account,
and most of them got a
petroleum club membership.
So this was really high living.
And so I interviewed for
this job, and took the job,
that was offered to me, and quit Texaco.
And all the other women
that worked for Texaco,
did the same thing, so we,
immediately dispelled that theory.
And my job with the independent was
absolutely the best training
in the whole wide world,
for ever becoming an independent myself.
Because I was very involved in all of our
geophysical programs, the,
engineering, the land acquisitions,
the deal making, showing
prospects, getting partners,
and that kind of teamwork,
and working with people
outside your company,
is one of the things that led me to,
have the skills to have my own company,
and do my prospecting.
But it was a great experience,
my boss, of course was promising
petroleum club memberships,
to all of his new hires
at this little company.
But the petroleum clubs
were not allowing women,
at that time, so he went to battle,
for me, and the geophysicist,
woman geophysicist he hired, and he said,
by golly, I told you, you could belong,
and you're going to belong.
And after a little bit of a fight there,
he got us admitted to the
Denver Petroleum Club.
And this is long before
Houston, or Dallas,
or Corpus Christie or any
of the petroleum clubs,
let women be members.
The first time we went to,
to go into the men's dining room,
the maitre d' said, I'm sorry,
you can't come in this
room, it's men only,
and we said, oh no,
they've changed the rule.
And he's like, they
didn't tell me, you know,
and we stand there and he makes calls,
and he finally lets us
into the dining room.
And I told Louise, who
was with me, I said,
this reminded me of a joke I
had just seen in the paper,
there were two women, trying,
seated in a fancy dining room
and the waiter, says to the ladies,
I'm sorry, be we only
serve men in this room,
and one of the women said,
well good, bring us two.
(laughter)
That's how I felt about
the petroleum clubs,
just bring them on, you know.
I had a, let's see,
I don't want to forget anything here.
Had a great career with that company,
and then, continuing on in the boom times,
I, I got offers to,
to start up consulting business,
and offers for clients.
Part of the reason that,
people would call me, was that,
I was very active in the
local professional societies.
The Rocky Mountain
Association of Geologists,
the American Association
of Petroleum Geologists.
And so, when you're, in your spare time,
doing your volunteer work,
and getting to know people
around the industry,
they take note, really
strongly, of your work ethic.
And your ability to get things done,
and your leadership abilities,
and your teamwork abilities.
And so when I started doing consulting,
and working on my own,
people would call me,
and you know, ask me if I
want to do a job for them.
Or if I was trying to sell a prospect,
or get partners on a deal,
I had a whole list of people that I knew,
in every company in town.
So I'd just start down the list, and when,
when you make a cold call like that,
if you know them, hi Lou,
this is Robbie Gries,
oh yeah, yeah, you know, I know.
They'll take your call.
But if they've never heard of you,
you know, they won't take
your call, half the time,
or more than half the time.
So, one of these things you
learn in your career, slowly,
is, and I think now, we teach it,
but at the time I was in school,
we weren't taught the value of networking,
and doing volunteer work, and
getting your face out there,
and, and getting to know some people.
I mean that will make
or break your career,
no matter what field you go in.
And so I was able to, I was
always able to stay working,
even when the next downturn came.
I, I stayed working for most of it.
Towards the end of that downturn,
in my consulting, I went through,
selling a prospect three times,
and before they gave me a check,
their management pulled
and said no, we can't,
can't take that deal,
we're cutting everything out.
I did some consulting on
a water case, legal case,
and my, my team lost the
case, and I didn't get paid.
I did some work sitting wells in Wyoming,
and the company,
skipped out of town, and didn't pay me.
And I was beginning to
get pretty desperate
at this time, I mortgaged my house,
which had almost been paid off.
And sold some other property,
and just did whatever I could
to stay alive for a while,
and then I thought, we'll I've got to,
I've got to take on a new,
challenge here in my career, because,
consulting is drying up.
And selling deals is drying up.
So I took some classes in
mergers and acquisitions,
and I got real excited about, okay,
maybe I can do this, because
I know a lot of people,
and a lot of people that,
are trying to sell their
companies, and so on.
Well I ended up, putting
together a merger,
of two companies, we had to
go out and raise public money,
so I flew all over the United States,
making presentations to brokerage firms,
and we raised about $12,000,000,
to put this, which isn't a
lot, but it's a lot for me,
to put this deal together,
and we created this new public company.
My partners in this deal, after we merged,
I was running the Denver office,
and found that my partners
weren't sticking with
their business plan.
And they weren't being real
honest with our bankers,
and they weren't being
real honest with me.
So once again, I thought,
okay, I can't do this,
so I quit, and that's when
I started my own company,
Priority Oil and Gas.
And did it kind of on a wing and prayer.
And I had been, fortunate to,
have an opportunity to
buy some old gas wells,
out in Kansas.
Now this was another dogma,
when I was first in
Texaco and Reserve Oil,
all the engineers said that,
one well will drain, 640 acres of gas.
And the geologists would always fight with
the engineers, and say, no,
I know it's better than that, or you know,
the economics will be
better if you let me put
two wells, or four wells,
or something in there,
it'll be a much better prospect.
No, the dogma was, one gas
well drains one square mile,
that's the way, engineering way.
Well I had this opportunity to buy these
three shut in gas wells, in,
in three different areas
in Northwest Kansas,
and I knew it could be developed.
And I knew there was room
for in fill drilling.
So I bought them very cheaply, and,
through all these contacts,
I got financial backing
to go out and do a,
3D seismic on these three little areas,
and that reduced my risk.
Usually our, dry hole ratio out there,
was about,
oh, 80%, you'd drill 10 wells
and have eight dry holes.
But with the new fad of 3D seismic,
which, it was not new in
the Gulf Coast at that time,
but they were not using it in
the Rocky Mountains that much.
But now of course, we don't do anything,
anywhere without it,
but at that time, I took it out,
and got the financing,
through some relationships I developed
for doing some 3D programs.
And then we drilled, in fill
drilled all these wells.
Again, knocking out the old dogma of,
one well drains 640
acres, and we'll have like
10 wells in one section,
draining that, that reservoir.
So, that was really good,
and successful for me,
and allowed me to finally breath easier.
Now I can do exploration with, you know,
a constant check coming in
from our gas development,
and that also allowed me to do more,
with my volunteer work.
And AAPG was, a long time bastion of,
good old boys, running the organization,
very few women, women not
doing much in the organization.
Well one of the presidents of AAPG,
a man named Jack Parker,
he was, he looked around at
his 30 committee chairman,
all men, and,
people on those committees, 99% men,
and he said, you know this
is, not the Dark Ages.
I want to see some women
on these committees, now.
And this was in the early '80s,
and so at that point,
me, and other women
we're being invited to,
do work, on these
committees, volunteer work.
We did that, we did it well,
and within 15 years,
although women were only about 10% or 15%
of the membership, we were chairing,
25%, 30% of the committees.
That's hard work, to get you there.
And, fortunately for me, at one point,
I was asked to run for office with AAPG,
I ran for secretary, and won that,
and served on the executive committee,
and then a few years later,
was asked to run for president of AAPG.
Now this, as you mentioned, Roger,
was just one, or Vern,
was one of the biggest
highlights of my life
in my career, and it is for anybody,
who gets an opportunity to be president
of this organization with
40,000 members worldwide.
And I was elected president,
the first woman president,
and this was at a time,
another fortunate thing for me,
that AAPG had decided to really expand
their emphasis worldwide.
And so,
coming in as president that year,
I decided to visit
every one of the regions
where we had geologists.
And I put together tours in South America,
Middle East,
went to Saudi Arabia,
had to go across the bridge
from Bahrain, you know,
with an escort.
Went all over Indonesia, South Pacific,
all over Europe, Eastern Europe.
And, I went to 40 countries that year,
and all over Africa,
it was the most exciting
thing a geologist can do.
Because everywhere you go,
even if you're there
only two or three days,
they will take you out
and show you some geology.
And so it's always fun.
And I gave talks to like 60 societies,
I gave talks to a lot of universities,
70 universities, and made
friends all over the world.
So that had to have been, you know,
the highlight of my career.
I know it's the highlight of the careers
of a lot of friends of mine,
who've been president of AAPG.
And,
all of it started, right here at Del Mar.
Del Mar, as a junior college,
at that time, every professor I had,
whether it was English, government,
history, biology, geology,
every classroom was
like 20 or 30 students,
we didn't have a TA
coming in, teaching us,
we had Professor Griffis,
he had Professor so and so.
Almost every professor that I had,
every teacher I had was a PhD.
I had the best education,
two year education,
that I think I could have gotten anywhere.
UT Austin would never
have provided me with the,
depth of education that I
got here, in every subject.
You know, geology was great,
and that's the other thing,
Del Mar, introduced me to geology,
and it's made my world wonderful.
But I can say to you guys that are
going to community
colleges, junior colleges,
you're not missing a thing
from a four year college,
by getting a sound education
in those first two years
at a school like this.
And I really appreciate
having come to Del Mar.
So thank you.
(applause)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
