Memorial to Walter Francis Gouin1894-1983

SH ER M A N A. W EN G ERD Albuquerque, New Mexico

Frank Gouin was bom in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, on June 7, 1894. He grew up in Silver City, New Mexico, where his parents lived during his childhood.

Frank attended high school at the New Mexico Nor­mal School in Silver City from 1908 to 1912. Later he won his Bachelor of Arts degree in geology after studying at the University of New M exico from 1912 to 1916. In May 1916 he joined Empire Gas and Fuel Company (later to becom e Cities Service) as a field geologist assigned to work in Kansas, Oklahoma, and North Texas. Earlier he had worked the sum m er before his senior year as field assistant to UNM Professor Charles T. Kirk. In Frank’s own words (in 1972):

It just seems like the breaks have always come my way, and I am indeed fortunate to have lived through the “Golden Age of Geology.” My geology professor was Dr. Charles T. Kirk, first geology graduate of the University of Oklahoma. It was my Greek professor Dr. Lynn B. Mitchell... who convinced me of the profession I should choose. My first employment [in the oil busi­ness] was under Everett Carpenter, May 1916.

In 1917 Frank was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the field artillery division of the United States Army. He served as an army officer at Leon Springs, Texas, during World War I from 1917 to 1919. After army service, Gouin joined the Atlantic Refining Company as district geologist for southern Oklahoma at Duncan, where he opened a district office in charge of four teams o f geologists mapping the area between and around the Wichita and Arbuckle Mountains.

During 1919, Frank was elected an officer of the newly organized Southwestern Geological Society, and at the first two meetings of that society, papers were presented by Frank Gouin, J. V. Howell, Raymond C. Moore, W. W. Cutler, John Bartram, F. G. Hall, and Ed Owen, all giants in the development of geological concepts and oil production in the midcontinent region.

Frank worked out o f Duncan until 1923, when he was transferred to Tulsa for a four-year stint as Atlantic division geologist for Oklahoma and Kansas.

Geology was Frank Gouin’s all-consuming occupation and his major hobby. He reveled in field work and the newly burgeoning field of subsurface analysis. In 1927, he yielded to the lure of his beloved Duncan, resigned from Atlantic, and moved back, to work as a consulting geolo­gist. By 1930, he was neck deep in his own geological business as an independent geologist and oil producer in southern Oklahoma. He was directly involved in his own exploration and develop­ment, drilling for oil and gas until 1966. He always enjoyed drilling “wildcats” much more than field wells. By 1971, he had completely turned over the operations of his producing leases to his son, Frank L. Gouin, a geologist and engineer who had become an expert in secondary recovery.

Frank was associated with the Boy Scouts o f America, beginning in 1927, in many capaci­ties: president, commissioner, member of the executive board, trustee of the Black Beaver Coun­cil (w hich w on him the Silver Beaver and Silver Antelope Awards), and chairm an of the national council. He fostered youngsters’ interest in geology through the Boy Scout movement.

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64 THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Frank Gouin’s academic and professional interests and publications led him to become a life member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, a Fellow of the Geological Soci­ety of America, an honorary life member of the Ardmore Geological Society, Fellow and life member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, director of the Southern Oklahoma Oil and Gas Association, and director and member of the Independent Petroleum Association of America. He received the AAPG Distinguished Service Award in 1978.

His community and civic service was far-ranging and included membership and service as president of the Duncan Rotary Club and district governor of Rotary District 577. He was presi­dent of the Duncan Chamber of Commerce, commander of the Duncan American Legion, a 32nd-degree Mason, a Shriner, an active member of the Elks Club, and a faithful member of the Presbyterian Church of Duncan.

Frank was a courageous man with boundless energy. He loved the country, and was not intrigued by life in large cities. He practiced intensely his hobbies of photography and geomor­phology, and gave freely of his time and finances to many charities.

Frank Gouin published few scholarly articles in learned journals, but his work on the AAPG Boy Scout Committee and his concise reports over a period of 43 years as well as the excellent accounts he wrote over the 12-year period of his chairmanship of the AAPG Boy Scout Literature Committee are examples of his diplomacy and clarity of thought. The prepara­tion, adoption, and publication of the Boy Scout merit badge pamphlet on geology was one of his most far-reaching activities and has had an influence on many thousands of Boy Scouts in America. Through his efforts and those of Elmer Ellsworth, the Boy Scout movement flourished in Japan after World War II. Several of his reports as AAPG Boy Scout Committee chairman are published in AAPG Bulletins volumes 31 through 39.

He was widely quoted by early authors who worked in southern Oklahoma, on the basis of his unpublished reports of wide-ranging surface and subsurface work on early structural defor­mation of the Arbuckle and Wichita Mountain areas.

Frank Gouin and Gertrude Hazeltine were married in Dallas, Texas, on June 28, 1920. They had one son and three daughters. Gertrude died in 1978.

Frank married a widow, Dorothy M. Cook, whom he and Gertrude had known for years, in 1979, and they moved to Memphis, Tennessee. He regained his buoyant outlook and, in his voluminous correspondence with friends, made many incisive and pithy comments on politics, economics of the oil business, the perfidy of federalism, and the importance of influencing our best youth to take up geology as a way of life.

The best example of his enthusiasm for geology is typified by the lecture he delivered to students at the University of New Mexico Department of Geology in the mid-1960s. That lec­ture, given at other universities as well, was a rousing one entitled “The Education of a Geolo­gist.” His notes for it included course recommendations, philosophy, the importance of field work and of belonging to AAPG and GSA, working with local geological societies, famous men who were the “movers” in the early history of GSA and AAPG, the history of early oil discov­ery in the midcontinent, and the importance of ethics in geologists’ careers.

Frank Gouin’s friends included influential geologists such as Wallace Pratt, Ed Owen, C. N. Gould, J.P.D. Hull, Robert Dott, Sr., A. I. Levorsen, Sydney Powers, John Bartram, Mon­roe Cheney, Ray Moore, Glen Ruby, and Kirtley Mather, as well as many young geologists.

Walter Francis Gouin died of emphysema on April 3, 1983, in Memphis, survived by his wife, his son Frank and two of his daughters, a stepdaughter, and ten grandchildren. He was an oil industry pioneer who showed his intense interest in the education of young geologists by establishing, in 1981, a scholarship fund for graduate geology students at the University of Oklahoma.

MEMORIAL TO WALTER FRANCIS GOUIN 65

SELECTED BIBLIO G R A PH Y OF W. F. GO UIN

1927 Beckham County, in Oil and gas in Oklahoma: Oklahoma Geological Survey Bulletin 40K, p. 165-177.

1930 The geology of oil and gas fields of Stephens County, Oklahoma: Oklahoma Geological Survey Bulletin 40E, v. 2, p. 21-66.

1947 Mid-Continent Regional Meeting, Wichita, Kansas, January 15-17,1947: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 31, p. 644-649.

1955 Exhibit XVII report of the Boy Scout Committee: American Association of Petroleum Geologists Bulletin, v. 39, p. 1174-1175.

1956 Surface criteria of southern Oklahoma oil fields, in Petroleum geology of southern Oklahoma, Volume I: Tulsa, Oklahoma, American Association of Petroleum Geologists, p. 14-35.

Printed in U.S.A. on Recycled Paper 4/93