entl was born and raised in Seattle, WA.  He grew up in the late 50s and was selected for the Upward Bound education project for underprivileged Black youth.  He graduated University of Washington with top honors and worked all over the world and even served as the Exploration Manager for the nation of Ghana’s oil concern, Ghana National Petroleum Corporation.  He is now a Senior Geophysical Interpreter in the oil and gas industry in Houston.  He has a great story to share…

 

Where do hail from, Bill?

I was born and raised in Seattle, WA. I lived there for the first 24 yrs. of my life.  But I’ve lived all over the world… Los Angeles, D.C., London, Indonesia, West Africa, back to and through the U.S. and now in Houston.

 

West Africa?  Really?

Oh yeah, man, West Africa is great.  That’s where wife is from and where kids were born.

 

Were you always interested in Geology?

I’ve wanted to be a geologist since I was a kid.  It’s the only field I’ve ever worked in.  When I was a kid I had rock collections and stuff.  I always wanted to be a scientist and wear one of those white lab coats.  What I do isn’t exactly like THAT (laughs) but it’s still in the science field.”

 

You were the big science geek in school? 

Yeah, pretty much.

 

So you, obviously, went to high school in Seattle.

Yeah, I went to the same high school as Quincy Jones and Jimi Hendrix, Garfield High School.

 

At the same time?

No no, Quincy’s attended in the 40s.  I was a bit later.  But he used to come over to our house all the time.  He used to run with my father.  He was talented.  They called him The Kid then.  My grandmother would always get on Quincy’s ass and tell him “When are you gonna get a REAL job and stop messing around, man!”  Quincy was on that thing they called the ‘West Coast Chitlin Circuit’ where he’d play a lot from Canada to Los Angeles. Ray Charles lived up there in Seattle at that time, so he traveled with Ray Charles as well.  He stuck what he wanted to do and the rest is history.

 

What about Jimi Hendrix?  Any brushes with him?

Not really, he was four or five years ahead of me in high school.  He came back to the school for a visit in ’68 though, right before he died.  One of my only memories of him was him smoking weed outside the gym that day (LOL).

 

What about college?  Where’d you attend?

I went to University of Washington and majored in Geology and Math.  And right out of college I taught high school in those veins for a couple of years.

 

Oh?  What were you teaching?

I taught Math, Natural Science and Physics at an adjunct to Garfield High School, 9th-12th grades.

Although, while I was teaching I took summer projects with the Forestry Service.  I worked for them mapping firebreaks and I was on the helipad crew.  By the time I came along they were starting to phase out fire jumpers but I still got to jump out of helicopters, fighting project fires.  It was kind of fun, actually. Those were just summer projects though.

 

Wow, that’s a more rugged side of being a geophysicist. Especially compared to what you do now.

Yeah, I’m all urban now.  You work with the forest service long enough you won’t even want to go in the woods anymore.  I was a lot younger then too, though.  It gets lonely out there.  Talk about cabin fever.

 

So off to Los Angeles from Seattle, right?  What was your first job as a geophysicist?

I got a job with U.S. Geological Survey.  This was a branch of the U.S. Forest Service that ran seismic surveys for the loggers; basically going out with a device that records sound waves and gives a description of what’s underneath the ground.  I gathered information on what kinds of rocks or formations are below the earth in an area.  With that info you can determine where the limestone pit sites are.

 

OK, and what would that info tell you?

Well the information is interpreted in different ways depending on who’s using it.  In support of logging companies the info is key for building roads for the logging trucks to travel on.  Limestone beds are soft enough to be dug out to build roads but strong enough that driving over them won’t deteriorate them over the long term.

 

Well, that’s a cool thing about this interview, besides learning something new, is that it sheds light on some of the applications of a geophysics degree.  I wouldn’t have associated geology to forestry necessarily.

Yeah, it’s an integral part.  But that’s just one aspect of the scope of the work.  I also worked on other short-term projects.  One project I enjoyed was I spent a few months in Washington, D.C. working on a House and Senate bill. 

 

You were involved in writing legislation as a geophysicist?

They were writing OCS (Outer Continental Shelf) regulations.  These are the regulations that govern access and drilling along the coasts of the U.S.  That was an interesting study and I got to learn how bills are put together.  The House would write a version and the Senate would write theirs.  They’d send both of them to us and we’d remove all the silly sh*t.  We would provide or correct the technical stuff in both bills and return them to their originating bodies.  This way, when it came time to merge the two documents it was more or less seamless from a geological terminology standpoint.

 

Wow, so geophysics gave you a brush with the government.  That sounds pretty cool.  Not what I would expect for a rock doctor.

Later on in life, I worked again in a pseudo ‘government’ capacity in West Africa.  I worked as the Exploration Manager for the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation.  Ghana has its own petroleum company.  I was the exploration manager and oversaw operations regarding drill site selection, evaluation and research and many aspects reporting directly to the chairman of the board.  It was akin to diplomatic status within the government.  When I left the country or returned to the country, I didn’t have to go through security or customs.  They drove me right out to the plane on the tarmac or picked me up from there.  That was a pretty terrific experience that I’ll never forget.

 

What makes me most proud about that period is that I took three guys that worked with me and I sent them to the U.S. to study Geology.  I wrote the Colorado School of Mines and they accepted them.  These guys are here in the U.S. to this day.  One of them is a Senior Geologist at Chevron, another is a senior geologist at a firm out in West Texas and the third is a Senior Geologist at YES Corporation.  Like me, they seized on an opportunity and made the most of it.  A true life turning point.

 

I have to admit, I’d never heard of a Black geologist of Black geophysicist until a few years ago.  Are you a rarity in the industry?

There’s actually a group called the National Society of Black Geologists and Geophysicists. They used to have an annual convention and everything.  You’d be surprised that there is actually a large number of us.  Especially within the Oil & Gas industry.  One of the employers of the largest amount of Blacks in the technical industries is the Department of Defense.   Some of the first Black geologists and mathematicians I’d ever met worked there.  NASA as well.  There are plenty of Black geologists and scientists.

 

From an educational standpoint, how was it in college to prepare for your field?

I can’t say it was easy.  There are tons of hard courses… Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, a bunch of Physics and Chemistry classes.  For every discipline, you have to take a year’s worth of courses in it.  Even more for Chemistry, Physics and Math; you have to take a couple of years each.

 

How did you finance college? Did you have grants or…??

I am the most successful member (at least in Washington) of Upward Bound.  It was a government sponsored education and training program.  I came along during the time that President Johnson was exploring Model Cities. That was a program that he undertook to rebuild all the cities’ urban areas.  Model Cities was a program where they’d go out and survey urban areas and determine what was needed and exactly how they could help everybody out.  An offshoot of that was a program called Upward Bound where they went out to the inner-city schools and recruited the inner city kids to go to college.  Sophomores usually.  In the summer they would take you out to the college campuses and have you take college courses and get used to the university atmosphere.  The agreement was that if we stuck with the program they would get you into college and the option was that you could get into any school in America.  All the universities had an agreement with the Upward Bound program, a federal program in just about every state, that they would accept any Upward Bound student.  I mean, I could have gone to Harvard or Yale or Princeton if I’d wanted to.  I wanted college but I wanted to stay closer to home so they paid my tuition and room and board for tour years.  I was very lucky.  But hey, I didn’t let ‘em down.  I gutted it out and went all the way through.  I think I’ve given the government back in taxes more than they invested in me. (LOL!!)

 

So they had minimum grade requirements to keep you honest?

Ooh yeah.   You had to be able to meet the grade requirements.  Even if you were a little shy GPS-wise to qualify for the school you got in under normal circumstances, you had to do your job and keep your head above water.  You have to toughen up and get those grades to stay.  I was given a wonderful opportunity and I swore that when my kids came along they were gonna have the same thing.  Of course, I paid more for theirs than I ever had to pay but I wanted to be sure to pay it forward.  I’ve got three girls.  All of them have graduated college; one even from Harvard.  I did my job on that.

 

So you stand for education, I see.

Absolutely.  That’s a cycle that we, as Blacks, have to get more into and get out of some of the destructive ones in our community.  I mean, it’s never easy but it can be done.  I grew up during the height of the civil rights era.  I mean we were out there marching and protesting, doing everything to redress the grievances society had handed us.  It was within my lifetime that there were Colored Only signs on public places.  I’m not bitter about that, my point is that kids today have a lot more opportunity available to them to really take control of their own destiny and get their education and, evolve and grow personally and professionally.  Things are more open for them.    They have no frame of reference for when things were really oppressive.  When Blacks could be killed without repercussion (not exactly unlike today).  They aren’t self-motivated to create their own opportunities.  I think they’re too ready to just accept no for an answer. That’s our fault though; we have not done our job educating them about their past well enough. The kids today are a lot smarter than us and have access to more information.

 

That doesn’t sound like it could ever have been your mindset.  Either in the era you grew up in or if you were coming up today.

Well, I’ve always been motivated, my whole life. I come from a family of 12 kids.  We had to make a little go a long long way in my family.  I had it in my mind then, and I imparted this to my classes when I was teaching, ‘I cannot be defeated’.  When you set a goal you’ve got to stick with it.  You’ve gotta have true grit, like the movie.  You’ve gotta stay the course.  That’s always the message I want to convey, you have to be RELENTLESS.

 

I think you’re living proof of that Bill.

 

 

 

 

V. Ray

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