I first learned about mineral collecting in 1950 when I was five years old from my neighbor and landlord, well-known southern California collector Earl Calvert who had given my mother two small crystals (quartz and apatite) in a cotton-padded box. Then, growing up, I spent a lot of time in the desert regions of eastern California, learning to appreciate the out-of-doors, and eventually decided I would become a geologist. I had been impressed by career pamphlets showing geologists trekking across deserts and fording jungle streams, and also found that geologists have good potential to do well financially. While still in elementary school I began collecting rocks and minerals myself. I never found anything resembling what I had seen in museums and picture books, so I learned early on to buy specimens I liked. My budget wasn’t big, but I acquired perhaps half a dozen decent specimens while still in high school, using money earned from a bicycle-powered paper route. Then came college, which kept me busy and cost a lot, so that ended my mineral collecting, at least for a while. I went on to post-graduate work, ultimately earning a Ph.D. in geology from Indiana University. From there I took an academic position at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, staying until the oil boom of the late 1970's when geological expertise became highly valued in the oil industry. I went with Getty Oil first, and then to Ladd Petroleum (a General Electric subsidiary), where I became Geological Manager for the Western United States. Oil crashed in the 1980's, and after a few years running a technical writing company, I had the opportunity to return to academics at the University of Southern Indiana. I stayed there from 1988 to 2009, retiring as Chair of the Department of Geology and Physics. With more time now (not a lot, but just more), I returned to my roots in the geological realm, going to some local mineral shows and buying a few specimens here and there. Then I began to learn the ropes of serious mineral collecting, and jumped in with both feet. Today I collect systematically and look for ideal and otherwise interesting crystals.


These photos show what 51 years can do to a person--1963 in California, on the day I left for college to study geology, and 2014 presenting my poster on the minerals of Lookout Pass, Utah at the National Meeting of the Geological Society of America in Vancouver, BC.