
May 2008
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In life, some things come from
vision and planning. Other good things
come from hard work. Discovering my
passion for geology came from sheer
dumb luck!
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April 2008
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Earth has always fascinated me. I grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma about five
blocks from the river. What we called the, “Woods,” was about two blocks from the
house on our side of the river, and my brothers and I often went there to play. Most
of the bottom of the river seemed to be covered with mud, but spots along the river
had rapids with a hard rock bottom. My mother managed to retain part of the family
farm on which she had been raised and my grandfather continued to live there. We
kept a cow there which had to be milked every day, and we farmed part of it until I
was in junior high school. I went to the farm daily until I was about fifteen, and
continued to go regularly until I left home. My other grandparents lived outside Seguin,
Texas and we visited that farm every summer until I was nine years old. We
visited relatives in Colorado shortly before World War II and relatives in Oregon and California after
the war.
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March 2008
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I still remember sitting on
the floor of my apartment
in Austin flipping through
the course book. I had just
finished my sophomore
year at U.T. with a “D” in
the second semester of Organic
Chemistry. That
meant Dental School was
out of the question. What would I do now?
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February 2008
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After being born in Hoovertown, Texas, on April 7,
1926, my family moved to South Dallas, where I
lived for my school years. I attended
Forest Avenue High
School and graduated in 1942
at the age of sixteen. I was always
grateful for the fine
profes- sional teaching staff in
the Dallas schools. One of my
teachers, a Latin teacher, knew I
would be graduating early, so in
the summer I rode the streetcar across town to her
home so she could teach me my fourth year of Latin.
This was certainly beyond the call of duty for her,
but of great benefit to me. Many of my mentors at
this time felt I should be a minister or an English
teacher and took me for a visit to TCU. My family
were members of the Christian Church, and, of
course, Fort Worth was near Dallas. I did not enroll
there, but I did enroll at John Tarleton Junior College
at Arlington (now the University of Texas at
Arlington). I had $25 and one suitcase when I enrolled.
I was able to complete two years before I left
to join the armed services.
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January 2008
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I was born on a small farm five miles south of Abilene, Kansas. After graduating from high
school, I enrolled in geology at Kansas State University which is only
fifty miles from Abilene. This made it easier to check on my mother
who lived on the farm by herself. My father passed away when I was
a fresh- man in high school.
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December 2007
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I was raised in northern New Jersey and was the fifth-borne
son of a very successful machine shop owner . Both my Mom
and Dad instilled in me and all four of
my brothers at an early age that there’s
no such word as “can’t “ in the Moherek
vocabulary and that the world was
my “oyster” where I could achieve anything
I wanted - if I put my mind to it. Of
course having an older brother hand me a
simple rock collection when I was a kid
al- ways fascinated me and first planted
the thoughts that rocks were cool . It
wasn’t really until my sophomore year in
college at Rutgers University back in 1972 that I decided to
major in Geology. Soon thereafter my long-term goal at that
time was to achieve a PhD in Marine Geology and study marine
sediments because I simply loved the ocean and always
believed our seven seas that occupy the majority of our precious
planet were (and still are) nearly totally unexplored. Also
picking geology as a major was an easy choice because I not
only liked the science but also quickly achieved high grades at
the same time.. Having grown up in northeastern New Jersey
within the metropolitan NY area I lived near some interesting
outcrops of what I now know are Eastern Appalachian basin &
range Tertiary red sandstones on top of a granite basement that
form the modern-day mountainous part of northwestern N.J.
where I first learned to fish in the inter-mountain lakes. Fishing
is much like oil & gas exploration in the sense one has to explore
a lake, stream or body of water to find the prize – the fish
or in our business - the oil & gas. So two of my favorite pastimes
– fishing and science were combined in the field of geology
and a natural by-product of such a combination was to enter
the industry as an exploration geologist. I did this in 1977
when I formally joined Tenneco Oil in Houston working onshore
in Texas RRC District 3 while being mentored by some
of the most successful geologists I have ever known. What I
learned early on from my mentors is to imagine without
boundaries and explore without fear, and I was trained to find 5
MMBBLO equivalent or larger fields . At that time Tenneco,
which was a major independent, installed a great educational
program for newly hired students whereby my skills were rapidly
enhanced by being sent to two petroleum schools per year
( seismic applications, petroleum engineering, electric log
evaluation, prospect economics, etc.) while learning back at the
office the basic exploration practices of mapping, isopaching ,
interpreting 2D seismic , and very importantly applying the
geologic concepts I learned at both Rutgers and Texas A & M
University where I received my M. S. Degree in Geological
Oceanography in 1977.
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November 2007
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I was born the last of five siblings, in Houston,
Texas in 1932, in the depth
of the Great Depression.
My father had become a successful
building contractor
whose early credits had included
working on the Panama
Canal. Like many others,
he lost everything he had
gained and accumulated in the
Crash of ‘29. On the upswing,
he was a construction foreman
on the Tower of an institution
I later learned to call “t.u.”,
completed in 1939. His fortitude and resilience in
the face of loss carried us through the Depression,
and taught me a life lesson that would serve well
anyone interested in the boom and bust business of
oil – a lesson which I have since relearned a time or
two for myself.
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October 2007
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Being born and raised in Carrizo Springs, oil runs through my veins. My start
into the oil and gas indus- try was at a very young age. My father,
T.V. Cabasos, was an operator on a workover rig and would
take my brother and me on weekends to roam the outdoors. My
first paying job was when I was ten years old, and I helped a contract
pumper/guager, Woody Nobles. My pay was $1 a day,
and all I could eat.
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September 2007
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I grew up in East New Orleans on landfill over a
swamp. Our street was scheduled for paving
when I was in the third grade, and my father and
the rest of the cheap skates on the street decided
not to pay what the city fathers allocated as their
legitimate street paving costs. Our street was then
filled with red sand and gravel instead of oyster
shell like every other single unpaved street in the
city.
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September 2007
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I was born in 1928, the youngest of four.
Dad was a mechanical engineer with the Hartford
Company and mother was a nurse.
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May 2007
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I grew up in Corpus Christi and attended Menger
Elementary, Wynn Seale Junior
High School and Corpus Christi
High School (now Miller High
School). We lived about five
blocks from where Ray High
School was being built. It was not
completed, so I had to hitch a ride
across town and back every day.
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May 2007
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My introduction to the oil and gas industry came
at a very early age, I was born in Hebbronville,
Texas where my father was
store manager for the National Supply
Company. We were your typical “oil
field trash” family in that we were always
subject to moving at a moments
notice, always looking for the next oil
boom.
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April 2007
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I was always good at math and science.
However, when I was in elementary school a teacher
put me in a math class one grade
level ahead where I floundered.
At that point I was labeled as having
a “poor” math aptitude and
ended up in related math in high
school. High school held very little
interest for me, but I loved high school biology,
where I excelled. I remember my biology teacher
would put little comments on my test papers such as
“pretty good for a girl.” After my junior year in high
school I dropped out. It was the summer of 1969,
and yes I do remember it. At age 21 I met my husband
while I was working as a secretary for the city
of Houston Health Department. I used to try to impress
people by telling them that I was just working
for a while and intended to go to college. My husband
believed it, and literally dragged me to sign up
for college courses at Houston Community College.
Not only did my husband spark a life long love of
learning, but he also fostered a love for the outdoors;
particularly backpacking. This is something we still
enjoy together today, but the rules have changed as I
now have to carry my own rocks. |
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April 2007
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Coming from a first generation family with no professionals
or college graduates on either side except for an aunt
and a cousin who were registered nurses, I had
no inkling of what college was all about or any
thought of study beyond high school. We lived
in a grocery store and my sole ambition was to
own and operate a modern facility with my dad.
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March 2007
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My parents did not go to
college, and I was always apprehensive
of going myself, but I did
decide to go. I picked the University
of Oklahoma because Oklahoma
was in the center of the
country.
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March 2007
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Having graduated a
half a year early from Santa
Barbara High School in California
(1966) I immediately started
school at Santa Barbara City
College, a local junior college. I
thought I was cool going to a
school that allowed you to smoke in the student
union. Well, after a couple of semesters studying
mostly how to party (it was California after all
in the late sixties), I found out I did not like
school and school did not like me.
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February 2007
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My parents did not go to college,
but all my brothers, sisters and I
heard growing up was “you kids
are going to college.” How do you
pick what you want to do for the
rest of your life when you are 18
years old? The one thing that I really enjoyed doing
as a kid was camping and hiking in the great outdoors,
but how do you make a career out of that? My
dad worked for Exxon and rode in a carpool with
four engineers. Anytime they were over at the house
I would ask them about college and their jobs, and
they would say “study hard and become an engineer,
it’s a great career!”
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February 2007
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I began my career in the oil patch as
an engineer with Mobil oil after
graduating from college with an electrical
engineering degree. After several
years, and several employers
later, I decided I would go back to college in search
of a new job career.
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Last Updated April 3rd, 2008
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