It is with great sadness that the family of Gerald Eugene Gould announces his death at the age of 95 in Sonoma, California on October 8, 2018. At his side was his beloved wife of over 48 years, Sheila. On July 6, 2019, she went on to join him. Gerald, known as Gene to his family and Gerry to his friends and colleagues, is survived by his children Melinda and John; grandchildren Joshua, Noah, Graham, Moriah, and Trevor; and 9 great grandchildren. He is also survived by his brothers Roger, Richard (Sara Sue), and Robert, and numerous cousins, including John and Jerry Herrman, Barbara Wentz, and Marilyn Milage.

Born on June 5, 1923 in Alton, Illinois to Myra Opal (Hermann) and Gerald Holly Gould, Gerry graduated from Golden High School in Colorado in 1941. After receiving a generous 4-year scholarship from the American Institute of Mining Engineers, he attended the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. His education was interrupted by World War II when in the spring of 1944 he and numerous others of his classmates enlisted in the military. Following in his father's footsteps, Gerry enlisted in the Navy where he was assigned to Texas A&M at College Station for Radio School, and then to the Alameda Naval Station near San Francisco. When he was discharged after two years of service, he returned to the School of Mines to finish his undergraduate requirements for the Engineer of Mines degree which he received in 1947. He then worked as an Assistant Engineer for the New Park Mining Company at the Mayflower Mine in Keetley, Utah for several years before returning to the School of Mines to begin his work on an advanced degree. He was appointed a Climax Molybdenum Corporation Fellow in May 1951. Although he completed over 80 units of graduate coursework, he did not write a dissertation for which he would have received a doctorate degree. His specialties were Geology and Geochemistry. After completing his last graduate course, he joined other School of Mines alumni who formed the Minerals Exploration Research Company (MERCO), a venture formed specifically to conduct geologic work in Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. When the company folded after a short time, Gerry and his family moved to California. He was employed as a Regional Mining Engineer for over 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service in the Pacific Southwest Region covering California with headquarters in San Francisco. He spent his last five years with the Forest Service with the Southwestern Region covering Arizona and New Mexico headquartered in Albuquerque. After he retired, he moved back to California where he and Sheila lived in Sonoma.

Having dedicated his professional life to the care and nurturing of the environment, Gerry exemplified how to live simply and in harmony with the land. A good and faithful husband and father, he was a friend to all who knew him and will be greatly missed by everyone.

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My father was born during the middle of the Roaring Twenties. Al Jolson's song "Toot Toot Tootsie (Goo'bye)," today associated with the flapper age, was the most popular song of the day. The silent film, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" starring Lon Chaney was playing in the movie theaters where a ticket cost 10 cents for children and 20 cents for adults. That year prohibition was in full force, and Warren G. Harding was President, although he would not be for long. A dozen oranges cost 50 cents. Life was good.

Life was good, too, for Gerald Holly Gould and his wife Myra Opal Hermann. Gerald was a newly hired policeman serving on the Alton Police force, having secured his position through the influence of his father-in-law, Otto Hermann, a former policeman and the current Alton deputy sheriff. Otto's eldest daughter, Myra, met her future husband at the Illinois Glass Company where she worked as a stenographer and Gerald was a packer. Having eloped after work one day in early October, they welcomed their first son Gerald Eugene Gould into the world on the 5th of June 1923. Named for his father and paternal uncle, he was known as Gene in his youth to distinguish him from his father and "Lefty" by his friends. At the beginning, they had a comparatively comfortable life. The Roaring Twenties was an era of wealth and excess affording the Gould family a period of relative prosperity.

Five years later in 1928, Gerald was able to buy their first home in the new Pettingill District of Upper Alton on Humbert St. Many years later, when he told me about buying this house, my grandfather, who was an only child, expressed consternation that his father-in-law had purchased the last lot sold in the neighborhood and that it was right next door to the one he had just bought the day before. This is where Otto intended to retire after his term was up as Madison County's Sheriff and he had to move out of the sheriff's house in nearby Edwardsville. Myra, Gerald said, seemed to have family everywhere in the county. Whenever he pulled someone over for a traffic violation, he often would have to let them go because it seemed they were always one of Myra's cousins. He joked that he just couldn't seem to get away from her family.

In July 1929, Gene's brother Roger Kimball was born. That summer, one of Laurel and Hardy's last silent films "Big Business" was playing in the movie theaters. By the end of summer, the effects of an economic recession were beginning to be felt. In October, the Stock Market crashed and the Great Depression was under way. The Gould family began to tighten their belt. Known as the Golden Age of Hollywood, the 1930s were far from golden for everyone else in the country. The decade began with a terrible drought that hit 23 states from the Mississippi to the mid Atlantic. With a whopping 25% of the population unemployed, 1932 and 1933 were the worst years of the Depression for the country. And, if that was not bad enough, 48 dust storms pummeled Oklahoma creating the great Dust Bowl forcing tens of thousands of poverty-stricken farmers to abandon their farms and seek refuge in the parts of the country not affected. A time of crime and lawlessness, Gerald now worked with the Illinois State Police and was one of the many policemen who in 1933 and 1934 chased after Bonnie and Clyde. Ten-year old Gene recalled once seeing his father loading a "Tommy Gun" while getting ready for work. It was in this environment that the Gould family continued to grow. In the summer of 1931, Gene welcomed his brother Richard Hermann, and in November 1934, Robert Allen, whom they called Dick and Bob.

November of 1933 marked the beginning of several years full of heartache and grief for the Gould and Hermann families. Retired now for three years, Otto, despite his doctor's warning, and his wife Hannah nevertheless decided to drive to Elmhurst, a suburb outside of Chicago, to be with their daughter Violet Louise and son Eugene Otis who lived nearby. Violet was about to give birth any minute to her second child. Suffering a heart attack on the morning after they arrived, Otto died at his daughter's home. Brought home by train, he was buried in Alton's Oakwood Cemetery in the family plot. A year later, Gerald's mother Stella, succumbed to cancer in mid January 1935. Ellis moved in to be with his son Gerald and his family, but he greatly suffered the loss of his wife. After eating Christmas dinner, he lied down on the sofa where it was said he died of a broken heart. June of 1936 began the hottest summer on record in Illinois. The heat wave throughout North America was responsible for killing over 1,600 people, and another 3,500 drowned just trying to cool off. Although she had survived the horrible heat, Myra's mother, Hannah, died the following summer in August 1937. Now only in their mid 30s, Gerald and Myra had both lost their parents, and the boys, now between 2 and 14 years old, had lost all four of their grandparents in less than four years.

Gene attended the local public schools in Alton. It was the Piasa Council of the Boy Scouts, however, that was the organization which he was most proud to belong. With his troop, he learned many of the skills he would use throughout his life, namely, tying knots, learning to read maps, and how to use a compass. At the end of March 1937 when Alton was hit by a devastating tornado, Gene was one of ten Boy Scouts who alongside the police helped control the crowds of curious visitors who swarmed the North Side of Alton to view the havoc. The following February, Alton's city officials and department heads recognized the Boy Scouts for their service who they declared had all "demonstrated the best traditions of Scout training and service by giving meritorious service to their community during the tornado disaster in the city of Alton, Illinois." Gene was unable to attend the awards ceremony, but when he eventually got a copy of the award, he framed it and proudly hung it on the wall alongside his other prized certificates.

After so much sadness, in the summer of 1938, the Gould family decided to take a long three-week road trip covering over 3,700 miles. Everyone was more than ready to get away for some fun and adventure. Climbing into their new 1937 two-door beautiful blue-grey Packard with Gene and his brothers Roger and Dick in the back seat, Myra sat in the front seat holding Bob on her lap. Gerald hitched a small trailer to the back of their car to haul their camping equipment with them, and they drove off heading northwest with their sights set for Yellowstone. When they got to South Dakota, they visited Myra's Herrman cousins who had migrated from Illinois in the early 1900s to homestead near Pierre. A wonderful time was had by all and spoken about fondly for many years after, although some of the cousins were so young at the time they only remembered stories about the visit.

On their way back home after seeing Yellowstone, while passing through Laramie, Wyoming, they would most likely have visited, if only briefly, the family of Gerald's first cousin Mary Moore Hawes whom they hadn't seen since October of 1936 when they had last visited Wyoming and the Rocky Mountains. Mary was the daughter of his paternal aunt, Louella who had died in 1927 three years after visiting the family in Alton and meeting Gene when he was still an infant.

The next stop on their itinerary was Denver. Here the Goulds visited Gerald's maternal uncle Charles Kimball and his family. Uncle Charles and Aunt Lena were getting up in years so they had moved into the beautiful 3 bedroom home of their son Herman and his family in Historic Denver on Vine Street. Herman and his wife Julia were expecting twins in October. With so many young children underfoot, the Goulds made arrangements to stay at a tourist camp not far away, about nine miles outside of Denver and 2-½ miles from Golden in Pleasant View. It was a straight drive down West Colfax Avenue and would only take about half an hour to get there.

The tourist camp in Pleasant View seemed just perfect. In fact, it was so perfect that when they learned that the tourist cabins along with a ten-room house were for sale, the Goulds jumped at the opportunity and decided to buy the place. The property even came with a filling station! Right then and there, without any hesitation whatsoever, they left their trailer behind and hurried back to Alton to sell their home and pack for the move. Gerald gave notice on August 16 that he was resigning his position in the police force effective immediately. They returned to their new home in Pleasant View just in time for the new school semester to begin. Finally, life began to look better for everyone.

Needless to say the Pleasant View Tourist Camp required a lot of work to keep up, and everyone who could, pitched in. Located about half a mile south of the Camp George West rifle range, then a military base for the Colorado National Guard, the property was large. It was five acres of mostly dirt and scrub in Section 1, Township 4, Range 70W, on the south side of West Colfax Avenue and less than 100 feet from the highway. The house too was large, two stories painted white wood with the first floor exterior lined with rock worn smooth by water. The cabins and filling station were east of the house. Gerald thought business would be good so he hired a few men help build a couple more cabins constructed of concrete floor and cinder blocks. Water was supplied by drilling wells on the land. One day while out at a well, Gene found some rocks that had been tossed aside when the hole was dug. They looked interesting to him so he decided to keep them.

Meanwhile, the Great Depression still had a firm grip on the country. The Gould family was living in Pleasant View two and a half years later on April 1, 1940 when the Federal Census was taken. The property was valued at $12,000, but Gerald who was listed as the Owner/Manager of a gas station had not received any wages the previous calendar year. Six months later, in late October, they moved out of the Pleasant View house. People just didn't have the money to put food on their table, let alone take vacations to far away places and stay at tourist camps in the Rocky Mountains. Unable to pay the mortgage, the family just packed up one night taking with them what they could. And so they leased a summer home on Genesee Mountain on Grapevine Road along Shingle Creek. Built in 1922 for his family by John Murray Correy, a WPA Civil Engineer, the summer home was called "Overbrook." Constructed of a native rock in the "old English style" of architecture, the home was described as modern in every respect. It comprised seven large rooms, a bathroom, and a basement, plus a garage for their car. The Gould family lived here for seven months until the house was sold to the new owners at the beginning of May 1941. Evelyn Thiede, their neighbor on Shingle Creek and Reporter for the Colorado Transcript reported in her column that the Gould family had taken a cabin in Cody Park (named for Buffalo Bill Cody) near Lookout Mountain. Not reported in the news was that the family then moved to another cabin at the Mt. Vernon Canyon area where they stayed for a few months.

Partly due to Evelyn Thiede's many contacts, word was out that the Gould family needed a place to live. Living in a cabin during summer was fine, but winters in Colorado could be brutal. They quickly found themselves as caretakers in the home of Strode Ralston. While he was serving in the military, his wife and children moved in with relatives. Strode returned in 1945, at which time his brother Merle enlisted in the Army. Since Merle lived just across the road, the Gould family only had to move across to the other side of the road to take care of his house until he returned.

Strode and Merle Ralston lived north of Highway 40 in Bergen Park on the Ralston Ranch. Very generous and kind-hearted, they were two of the seven children of Lucian McKee Ralston and his wife Bessie Lindsay. Lucian's father, Captain Lucian Hunter Ralston, a native of Kentucky moved his family to a log cabin near Cody Park near Genesee and Lookout Mountains in 1879. Captain Ralston taught the children at Rockland School and helped build the Rockland Church while raising potatoes and grain. In 1887, the family established a 768-acre ranch and general store where Interstate 70 now lies between Exits 256 and 254. To support raising their children, Lucian and Bessie Ralston established a variety of enterprises. The children helped grow and harvest grain, hay, and vegetables. They milked cows and tended chickens to sell milk and eggs at their general store called Swingles, perhaps named for their youngest son Morton's wife, Eva Swingle. Behind the store Lucian built a large room to provide space for community celebrations and meetings. After Lucian's death in 1957, the Ralstons traded their Genesee Mountain land to preserve the wildlife habitat, plant diversity, and extraordinary views, and to allow for Genesee development and construction of I-70.

At some time while living in this area, Gene was told about a cut along a mountain side where there was a pit about 6 feet across and 3 or 4 feet deep. Garnets had been discovered here, but by the time Gene with his miner's pick in hand, went over to investigate, he found that any of the larger stones that may have been there were gone. He did find some lower quality stones, but said the pit had been pretty well picked over.

Gene and his brothers did well in school and rarely missed a day despite the frequent moves. When they were old enough to go to school, Dick and Bob attended the small school in Rockland while Roger commuted to school in Golden. After their move from Alton, on September 29, 1938, Gene was welcomed in the Colorado Transcript as one of the ten new Golden Demons, and one of the 65 sophomores enrolled in Golden High School's class of 1941.

A popular student in the small school of 280 students, Gene participated not only in wrestling, basketball, and glee club, but also many of the drama and musical programs. One of his favorite memories was that of being in Miss Gray's drama class that produced a marionette show of Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel." An elaborate production, Gene sang in the chorus and played the bassoon, the instrument representing the role of the witch. In his senior year, he was on the Senior Play Production Staff for the play, "June Mad." (Based on Florence Ryerson's novel, the play was turned into a movie that year called "Her First Beau," starring Jane Withers and Jackie Cooper.) Having caught the acting bug, during the summer before he began college, he continued his dramatic pursuits. He was one of the supporting actors in the cast of Jean Provence's new play "Grandpa's Twin Sister: A Farce in Three Acts" performed by the Rockland young people's club at the recreation hall in nearby Genesee. While Gene's love of classical music and live theater continued to grow, his role became that of an avid audience member in the many live theater and classical music productions he attended over the years.

In early March of his senior year, he and another Golden High student decided to take the entrance examination into the Colorado School of Mines. At the School of Mines Engineers' Day on March 14, it was announced that Gene was one of five winners of a scholarship sponsored by the American Institute of Mining Engineers (AIME). The scholarships were generous, valued at about $500 each, covering tuition and fees for four years. In today's money, this would be the equivalent of over $9,000. (By way of comparison, tuition today for one year at the School of Mines is around $16,000 and fees $2,000.) The scholarship was a godsend! On May 29, 1941, Gene graduated from Golden High School.

That fall, Gene was one of ten students to enroll in the class of '45 at the Colorado School of Mines. Early in the semester, responding to a call for rock and mineral specimens, he remembered the rocks he had collected from near the well at the Pleasant View house. He took them to the geology department for identification. A paleobiologist, Dr. Roland W. Brown happened to be passing through Golden at that time. Dr. Brown took the specimens with him back to the Museum of Natural History (part of the Smithsonian Institution) where he worked. He showed them to Dr. John Bernard Reeside, Jr. who was considered at the time the foremost authority on the Mesozoic stratigraphy and paleontology of the Western Interior region of the United States. Dr. Reeside identified the rocks as a fossil of a brackish water type shell, Corbicula cleburni and C. planumbona, so called for their basket shape and ribs. Dr. Brown said that by themselves these fossils might not be significant. However, along with the dinosaurs and flora found in the area they indicated that the sea was probably not far to the east during early Denver geologic time. Furthermore, the existence of coal-forming coastal swamps in a coal field, about 15 miles east of Denver corroborated this. Dr. Brown was so interested in the newly-discovered fossil shells, when he returned them to the School of Mines he kept several specimens for his own further research. He then revised his research to include Gene's newly discovered shells in his paper. It was not until January 1, 1943 that the article entitled "Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary in the Denver Basin, Colorado" was published in the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America (Volume 54, pages 65-86). Gene, in the meantime in September 1941, donated his fossils to Golden's Geology Museum. His interest thus piqued, he continued to hunt for fossils and collected some very fine specimens over the years.

In early 1941, the federal government announced that they had selected Jefferson County farm land in nearby Lakewood to be the site for the Denver Ordnance Plant to be operated by Remington Arms Company. Construction was expedited so that in September 1941 over 15,000 employees, 47% of whom were women, were hired. Both Myra and Gerald found employment here. On December 7, 1941, "a date that will live in infamy," Pearl Harbor was bombed. The family was living at Strode Ralston's home and gathered around the radio. Both Bob and Roger said they remember the day well. Myra didn't know where Pearl Harbor was, but thought it was some where in California. Bob had never heard of the Sandwich Islands and had no idea at all where they were. The following day, Britain and the United States declared war on Japan. Rationing on certain items such as sugar, meat, cooking oil, and canned goods had already begun the previous year, but in January 1942, Jefferson County began to ration rubber tires and gasoline. By February, the Jefferson County war enlistments had reached 2,528. Although my grandfather Gerald had served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, he was among the 662 men who enlisted from Golden. Gerald left his job with Remington Arms Company and by September had reenlisted in the Navy as a boatswain's mate. He reported his reenlistment to friends in Alton who in turn shared it with the Alton Evening Telegraph, explaining that he expected his wife Myra would remain in the Denver area with the boys. He also predicted that his son Gene would soon enlist in the Navy.

At the end of June 1942, after he turned 19, Gene registered with the Draft Board. Now in the prime of life, at 6'1" tall, he weighed 160 pounds and had a light brown complexion, blue eyes and brown hair. Gene however would not enlist for another two years. He instead continued his studies at the School of Mines, completing his junior year courses. Then, in May 1944, immediately after all his classes were over for the semester, along with a great many of his classmates, Gene too enlisted in the Navy. In one of Gerald's letters home in October 1944 while he was recuperating from the malaria he contracted while in New Guinea, Gerald wrote to his old friend in Alton, Sgt. Raymond Galloway, that his son Gene was at Navy Radio School at Texas A&M, College Station.

Although Gerald continued to look forward to an active duty reassignment in the States, this was not to be. After serving two years in the Navy, he returned home to Myra and boys, Roger, Dick and Bob with some money so they were able to move. They found a very rustic house in Empire a small historic mining town at an elevation of 8,615 feet above sea level and about ten miles beyond Idaho Springs on Highway 40. With an outhouse in back and water supplied through a pipe that ran along a ditch, they raised chickens and rabbits. To help ends meet, the boys made small bark picture frames and "Indian tom-tom drums" to sell to tourists. Made from coffee cans, the drums were covered with a faux wood, and rawhide used to cinch down the leather covers. While Myra and the boys seemed to do well enough here, Gerald found farm life difficult after being away for so long and now being so far away from civilization. Gerald had lived near cities all his life and he still felt the need to travel. So in December of 1946, he went off to Alton for a short stay and to visit his old friends. He told them his new home was in Empire, but by March, Gerald had decided to stay in Alton and needed to get an Illinois driver's license. He never returned to be with the family, and it was many years before he was heard from again, although he did return to live in the Golden area in the early 1950s.

In the meantime, after completing Radio School in Texas, Gene was transferred to the Alameda Naval Station across the bay from San Francisco. It was while here that he met Delia Esperanza Oveso, a WAVE also in the Navy in Alameda. Dee, as she was called, worked in the library on the base. She was discharged on August 1, 1945, just days before the United States detonated two nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9. Gene, now known as Gerry, remained in Alameda until he was discharged a year later. When he was discharged, he returned immediately to Empire with plenty of time to begin summer classes and complete his senior year at the School of Mines. Gerry and Dee continued their long distance courtship, and in early February 1947, she traveled to Colorado from her home in Los Angeles. On Friday, February 7, they were united in marriage at Calvary Episcopal Church by the Rev. Leonidas Smith. They made their home at 1006 Thirteenth Street in historic downtown Golden.

Gerry continued with his studies and on May 29, 1947, received his Engineer of Mines degree. His specialties were Geology and Geochemistry. Soon after graduation, he accepted a position as an Assistant Engineer at the Mayflower Mine with the New Park Mining Company in Keetley, Utah. Located 20 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, on the eastern flank of the Wasatch Mountain, the Mayflower Mine was extremely productive and in 1950 alone shipped 6,448 tons of ore consisting of gold, silver, lead, zinc, and copper.

In the summer of 1950, Dee traveled back to Los Angeles to be with her mother Petra and sister Emma while she waited for the birth of their first child. Six days after giving birth, Dee brought Melinda home to live with them in the miners' housing at the Mayflower Mine. Several months later so that they could live closer to the grocery store, they moved off the mountain to a home in Keetley, the small Mormon community in the valley below the mine. During World War II, the area was the wartime home of Japanese internees who farmed 150 acres. My father often said that we were the only Gentiles living in Keetley, and other than other a few other miners, this was probably true. Today Keetley is a ghost town having been submerged in 1990 under the Jordanelle Reservoir.

Although the Mayflower Mine was extremely productive in 1950, it closed in 1952. Anticipating its closing, my father enrolled as a Graduate Student at the Colorado School of Mines in the spring semester of 1951, and that May 1951 it was announced that he was appointed a Climax Molybdenum Corporation fellow. The family moved back to Colorado, and for a short time, the family lived in student housing, the former barracks on campus, before moving to a small house on Ford Street where we lived when my brother John was born in late December 1953.

In the spring of 1953, the School of Mines announced plans for an inaugural course in Advanced Field Mining Geology at Aspen for the summer session. Professors John L. Herron and Kermit S. Herness from the School of Mines were the instructors. The following summer of 1954, my father joined the program as one of the instructors working in the Aspen area.

On December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower gave his "Atoms for Peace" speech to the United Nations. This was part of a carefully orchestrated media campaign that called for rules of engagement for a new kind of warfare known as the cold war. Eisenhower proposed peaceful uses for uranium and that the Atomic Energy Commission would be a repository where the fissionable material would be collected, stored, and distributed. This opened up nuclear research to any civilians who with a Geiger counter and time to spare could search for uranium on their own. The promise of quick riches was more than tempting and set off a rush for uranium in Colorado the likes of which had not been seen since the Colorado Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859.

On the last day of the summer course, Professors Herron and Herness resigned their positions at the School of Mines and announced that they had started their own company called Minerals Exploration Research Company (MERCO). Herness, president of the firm, reported that MERCO planned to do geological work for themselves and others with whom they had contracts for work in Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and Venezuela. Work included a major job with a $100,000 contract with American Exploration Company of Grand Junction, Colorado to make field and laboratory investigations, including aerial color photography, of America's holdings in the Colorado Plateau area. Financing for MERCO came from Franklin W. Baumgartner, another School of Mines alumnus who in the fall of 1953 had drilled an oil well on leased land 16 miles south of Fort Morgan, Colorado. When oil flowed at the rate of 1,000 barrels a day making Baumgartner a millionaire overnight, he quit school. Baumgartner sunk $33,000 into the MERCO venture. Herness was joined by seven colleagues, former teachers and instructors from the School of Mines, including my father, and two airplane pilots. As one of the seven partners, my father was to receive a $6,000 a year salary, almost double what he earned as an instructor at the School of Mines, plus 12% of the stock.

At the beginning of June 1955, my father completed his mining report for MERCO. A copy of the report entitled "Preliminary evaluation of the West Los Ocho property: Cochetopa Mining District, Saguache County, Colorado" is at the Arthur Lake Library at the School of Mines. At the same time, a brief article in the June 1955 edition of the Uranium Magazine announced that by using a new method of magnetic interpretation for finding deeper ore bodies MERCO had located an important new ore body on Garth and Vance Thornburg's Los Ocho property near Gunnison, Colorado.

This was an incredible time to be in the mining business! But, with all the hope, promise, and enthusiasm this venture offered, within four months, the company dissolved. The partners all decided to give Baumgartner the office property on Ford Street to repay him as much as they could for his investment. Dr. Herness now no longer connected with MERCO, joined as a geologist with Baumgartner Oil Company. Charles Melbye and Stuart Merwin went into partnership together as Geological and Geophysical Consultants. Fred Hohne moved on to do geology in Arizona and New Mexico.

We headed west to California! Early one day in January 1956, my father loaded all he could into a U-Haul trailer hitched behind our 1953 green two-door Ford sedan. Everything else was put into a Mayflower Moving Van to be delivered when we arrived at our new home in Daly City, a suburb just south of San Francisco. My father commuted from home every day to downtown San Francisco. It was a long commute for him. His day began with a Greyhound bus to the Mission and 7th Street bus station, then a streetcar down Market Street, and finished with a quick walk six blocks up Sansome Street. This is where he was to work for the next 30 years with the Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, Division of Lands and Minerals.

My mother, regrettably, suffered from long bouts of mental illness. While we lived in Daly City, my father did everything he could to keep the family together. After my mother suffered a devastating miscarriage in the summer of 1958, my father found a wonderful Jungian psychiatrist for her, Dr. Donald F. Sandner. Dr. Sandner incorporated his interest in the healing rites of the Navajos into Western medicine. My mother took painting classes at the San Francisco Art Institute and dance classes with Anna Halprin's Dancers Workshop. We went to art fairs in San Francisco City Hall and Mill Valley. One foggy day in September 1960, my father took my brother and me to Fog Gap at Mussel Rock in Pacifica where we collected our own seashell fossils. My brother was enrolled into a small school in San Francisco called Presidio Hill Open Air School where my father taught the students geology one morning a week. Here we all helped with fundraisers and attended spaghetti feeds, May Day celebrations, and sang with Pete Seeger and Malvina Reynolds. We vacationed one summer in Santa Barbara and Carpintinera. And despite everything that was tried, nothing would make the voices in my mother's head go away. They were too intense, too deep, and too painful. Her solution was to divorce my father.

So at the beginning of 1962, my father moved out of our house on West Cavour Street, all the while continuing to pay alimony and child support. He moved to the Kenmore Residence Club, a boarding house on Sutter Street. Here he had a small room on the third floor overlooking the street. My brother John and I visited him there often on the weekend. We ate breakfast and dinner in the dining room with the other residents. The food wasn't what we were used to, but it was more than adequate, meat and potatoes mainly. It was here that my father met a number of recent immigrants from England and Canada. One day he told us about one of them in particular who had caught his attention, saying only that he'd "met someone" and that her name was Sheila. Sheila was from England and she soon became my father's constant companion and eventually our stepmother.

Because my mother was unable to care for my brother and me, my father became a single dad, unusual in that day. He found a flat on Fifth Avenue near Irving in the Inner Sunset, with a streetcar stop practically at our door. And he bought a household of furniture from a family that was moving out of the state. He bought absolutely everything they didn't take with them, including an upright piano and a sewing machine. After that, "it came with the furniture" became a constant refrain when we asked where something had come from. Sheila found an apartment nearby up the street.

The flat on 5th Avenue was flea infested, so we soon moved to a larger place in the neighborhood, and then once again, this time to a beautiful house on 15th Avenue near West Portal. We lived here for some time and in July 1970 my father decided it was high time that he married Sheila. They moved briefly to a house in the Sunset on 35th Avenue, close to Golden Gate Park, but since Sheila no longer worked downtown, she found the days very dreary due to the constant fog. So they moved across the bay to Pleasant Hill where the weather was much better. My father was pleased that even though the commute covered more miles, it took less time to get home on BART than it did on the streetcar to the Avenues in the City.

My father kept a lot of things close to his chest. He once told me about some close friends he had made through the many field trips for his work. While he considered the wife to be like a second mother to him, who she was, I'll never know. I never met her. He didn't tell us much about the work he did with the Forest Service either, although we knew he was a geologist and mining engineer and that he proudly considered himself a "rock doctor." He loved being asked questions about earthquakes, often telling us that the only thing that could be predicted about an earthquake was that the further away we got from the last one, the closer we got to the next one. Bill Johnson and Bill Sanborn, and the attorney they worked with, Chuck Lawrence were the colleagues my father often spoke about. Early on, he worked with Jim MacFarland, who had decided to become a dentist when it became evident that due to a bout with polio he would not be able to work in the fields. When he opened his own practice, we were among his first patients. One summer we visited Jim's Honest John Mine near Quincy. Here we panned for gold in the river bed and found some nice sized nuggets. When my father married Sheila, Jim made her wedding ring out of gold my father had panned.

In the 1980s, my father applied for and was given a transfer to the Southwestern Region of the U.S. Forest Service headquartered in Albuquerque. When he left the offices in San Francisco, my father's colleagues presented him with a thick bound volume of his Many Contributions and Achievements, consisting of all the documents and rulings he had been a part of since he started working in San Francisco in 1956. There are also numerous articles written about him in newspapers around the country, in books, and professional journals describing the work he did in San Francisco. My father and Sheila lived in Albuquerque for five years until he retired from the Forest Service. The Southwest and New Mexico in particular, was a cultural haven for them. Here they began to seriously collect Navajo rugs, pottery and kachina dolls. When he finally retired, they decided to move back to California.

After a long search, my father and Sheila found a home in a quiet corner of Sonoma County, in an unincorporated area of the town of Sonoma, called Boyes Hot Springs. Situated under a great Oak tree and with a creek running under it, the house was built in 1937 as a summer cabin for families from the San Francisco bay area who spent their vacations in the country. The garage rarely held a car as this was where my father did his carpentry work. Determined to never move again, Gene and Sheila made this their home for nearly 30 years, longer than either of them had lived anywhere. During their retirement, when they weren't puttering around the house or working on the upkeep of their home, doing carpentry, gardening, or preparing for their next camping trip, they traveled often for family reunions around the country, to attend Indian Markets in New Mexico, and to England to visit Sheila's family. But their home in Boyes Hot Springs was their refuge.

My father was a quiet man, and humble. In some ways, he was probably very much in temperament like his grandfather Otto Hermann, the policeman who was once described as polite, soft spoken and having a kindly voice. Though he could be stern at times, he was devoted to his duties. He achieved results by persuasion rather than by force, winning the confidence of those with whom he came in contact. Although he often had an unspoken melancholy about him, perhaps due to the many troubles he had seen during his life, my father had a great sense of humor, loved being punny, and whistled while he worked.

As Regional Mining Engineer, my father had the responsibility of determining the validity of mining claims in the 17 National Forests of California. The people living on claims deemed to be invalid were removed so the land could be returned to nature and once again accessible for recreational uses such as camping and hiking. It turned out this could to be dangerous work. At least once he came face to face with a gun barrel as he surveyed a mining claim in Mendocino. He picked up his equipment and came back later with an escort so that he could complete his survey. One mining claim my father surveyed early on in his career was the Lone Wolf Mine, an underground mine located at Lower Salmon Lake in the Gold Lakes Basin in Sierra County. The mine was an old one, having been worked since at least the 1920s by the family of Charles Kuhn Smith, who had owned in the mine with his father during summers from the age of 6. When my father discovered the lake and found the fishing to be good, he fell in love with Lower Salmon Lake.

The summer of 1962, my father took my brother John and me to the Gold Lakes Basin in the Sierra National Forest for the first time. Off of the Gold Lake Highway, you had to know just where to turn off, my father drove onto a narrow one-lane dirt road leading to a Forest Service cabin. As a Forest Service employee, he was able to get a key to the cabin when it wasn't in use. It was a very basic structure with a concrete slab floor and corrugated steel walls and roof and two small windows high up so that the cabin could be entered when the door was deep in snow. Inside, on either side of the door were two metal framed bunk beds with thin cotton mattresses. At the far end of the room was a pile of wood sitting next to the big black Franklin stove that we used for heat and cooking. In the middle of the room were a picnic table and two benches. It was here we created such memorable dishes as "Sawdust and Bullets," still a family favorite. Field mice often visited us so everything had to be tightly sealed and put out of reach. Behind the cabin at some distance away was a spring with the freshest, sweetest, coolest water. Even further away was an old stinky well-used outhouse. A lone donkey spent his days wandering around the meadow munching on the fresh greens close to the ground.

One day, my father excitedly told us that a new bridge over the Church Creek on Salmon Road was finally finished and we could now get to Lower Salmon Lake. The bridge was not much to talk about really, but it led to the bumpy gravel road leading to the lodge at Upper Salmon Lake. We weren't going there, but instead stopped at a wide spot along the road where we got out of the car. The road down to the lake was so rocky and our old car was so low to the ground, it would never have made it. So we carried our lunch and fishing poles down the rest of the way, about half a mile. At the end of the road, just beyond a small creek was a narrow plank pier with one small, green wooden rowboat with "U.S.F.S." painted in white on the side. My father had a key to the lock that secured the boat to the pier. The three of us carefully climbed into the boat, my father at the oars and my brother and me at the stern and bow. John and I quickly learned how to row and eventually we were able to row so smoothly that as we dipped our oars into the water not a splash was seen or heard. My father sat at the stern and cast his fishing line into the water. He trolled while my brother and I took turns slowly and very gently rowing him around the lily pads and other spots where the fish were biting. As my father fished, we looked up at the Sierra Buttes, sun at our backs under the beautiful blue sky. Sheila joined us later. Having taken a Greyhound bus, we met her at Truckee. That summer we all caught at least one of the beautiful Rainbow salmon trout.

The next summer my father traded in the old green Ford for a red Volkswagen bus. We returned to Lower Salmon Lake, only now we were able to drive all the way down the road to the lake. Even though it was a long drive from San Francisco, we made the trip many times over the years. After my father got off work, with the Volkswagen bus filled to the gills, we were ready for the long 6-hour drive into the high Sierra Nevada mountain range almost to the end of Highway 49 and down to Lower Salmon Lake. We arrived after midnight, tired and exhausted, but set up camp in a clearing along the road among the rocks, boulders, and other stones. A sleeping bag on a blown-up air mattress was all we needed. We were too tired to think about the next day when we would look forward to a dinner of fresh trout cooked in an iron skillet over the small propane camp stove. High up in the mountains, at over 6,300 feet above sea level, the air was thin, but very clean. Far away from civilization, we felt safe, protected from all harm. We very rarely saw anyone else. It was quiet except for the sound of the wind rustling through the trees and the occasional howling of the wolves off in the distance. With no radio, no television, no newspaper, we were as far away from the troubles of the world as we could possibly get. Snug in our sleeping bags, we looked up at the dark night sky with all the bright stars shining above. We found the Milky Way, the North Star and then the Big Dipper, and quickly fell asleep. We were at peace. All was well.

Now, if you want to find my father, close your eyes. Take in a long deep breath of the clean, crisp, fresh air and exhale slowly. You will find him at Lower Salmon Lake in the shadow of the Sierra Buttes under the beautiful blue sky with the sun at his back, sitting at the back of a rowboat with his fishing line trolling behind him, patiently waiting for a fish to bite, at one with the world, and at peace.

May he rest in peace.

Melinda J. Gould
September 18, 2019


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Then go on as one who has long life.
Go on as one who is happy.
Go with blessing before you.
Go with blessing behind you.
Go with blessing above you.
Go with blessing around you.
Go with blessing in your speech.
Go with happiness and long life.
Go mysteriously.

(From the Dine/Navajo Emergence Tale, Donald Sandner, MD, 1979, Navajo Symbols of Healing: A Jungian Exploration of Ritual, Image, and Medicine.)