John Wold '38 is a man for whom the phrase “rugged individualism” was coined.
And no better evidence can be offered than his career, during which he has become one of the American West's leaders in both the development and conservation of natural resources.
Today, the list of his
companies includes Wold Trona, Wold Nuclear, Wold Oil and Gas, and Wold Talc; his memberships range from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to the Geological Society of America; he is a former U.S. Congressman; and he and his wife, Jane, have made the largest gift to the College in its history (see adjacent story for details).
Wold's attachment to Union goes back to his childhood. His father, Dr. Peter I. Wold, was the head of the College's Physics Department from 1919 to 1945, and his older brother, Ivor, graduated from the College in 1934. John Wold recalls that during most of his childhood he lived in the faculty residence in North College.
“I still think of myself as a 'Campus Kid', and I still remember as a youngster tending my vegetable garden in the shadow of the old greenhouse in Jackson's Garden,” he says.
He recalls that as he walked to the Elmer Avenue Elementary School, he would pass a mound of old mineral specimens that the Geology Department had discarded. “I would paw through those samples and eventually built up a pretty nice collection of minerals from around the world,” he says. “That dump was one of the first things that got me interested in geology.”
After graduating from the Taft School in Connecticut, Wold entered Union. Despite winning the Wessel Ten Broeck Van Orden Prize for the freshman excelling in English composition, he found himself drawn to geology. It was the enthusiasm of Professor of Geology Edward Smith that, he says, led him to Cornell, where he earned his master's degree in geology.
Wold was an active undergraduate, with a long list of activities–the Terrace Council, cheerleading, Alpha Delta Phi fraternity, the varsity hockey team, and Sigma Xi, the national honorary society dedicated to scientific research. He was also the College's second St. Andrews University Exchange Scholar, and in his first letter home he proudly told about introducing the concept of cheerleading to the unsuspecting Scots.
“Last Saturday at the rugger game four of the American girls and I organized a cheering section among ourselves and shattered all traditions–
St. Andrews and Scottish–for conduct at a sporting event. We used our cheers, substituting St. Andrews for Union. Some spectators enjoyed it and others were rather shocked.”
The cheering Americans were supported by an editorial in a Dundee newspaper, which said the “college battle-cries, or whatever these weird incantations are called,” enlivened the game and ought to be encouraged.
Back at Union, Wold accepted the Goldwin Smith Fellowship to study at Cornell. After receiving his master's in 1939, he headed for the oil fields of the Southwest, working for outfits such as Socony Vacuum's Magnolia Petroleum in Oklahoma and Texas. Wold says that at the time the only employment opportunities for geologists, other than academia, were in oil and gas. “So I drove my Model A Ford from Ithaca to Tulsa and Houston to interview for jobs.”
His father, Dr. Wold, conducting research for the Navy, persuaded John in early 1941 that war was inevitable. So,
on leave from Magnolia, John joined the Navy as a consulting physicist, applying for a commission shortly before Dec. 7. During the next few years he was a gunnery and later the executive officer of a destroyer escort in the Atlantic and Pacific.
After the war, he went to work for Barnsdall Oil on the Gulf Coast, at the same time courting Jane Adele Pearson, a native of Schenectady and a graduate of Wheelock College. The two had met several years earlier, when John was a student at Union. “My mother persuaded me to drive the daughters of some of her friends to Lake George for a birthday party,” he recalls. “One of them was Jane.” They were married in September 1946 in St. George's Episcopal Church in Schenectady.
The couple returned to the West, eventually settling in Wyoming. In 1950 Wold began his one-man operation as a consulting petroleum geologist.
“Most geologists today are independents, but in those days the thought was that you had to stay with a big company for job security,” he says. “There weren't too many of us willing to go it alone.”
Doing his own geological work and research proved the right decision. Wold Oil and Gas has been a significant exploration and production operation in the Rocky Mountains for more than fifty years; today it is headed by sons Peter and Jack, with continuing operations in the Rocky Mountain states as well as exploration activities in Southeast Asia.
In the 1960s and 1970s, John Wold added joint coal exploration and acquisition programs, assembling more coal properties than any other entity in the country. In 1973 he founded Wold Nuclear Co. He was a co-discoverer of the Christensen Ranch uranium ore body, one of the largest in the country, and played a principal role in the development of the Highland Uranium Mine, the world's largest.
Recently, he formed the Wold Trona Co. to develop a mine and soda ash plant in the Green River Basin of Wyoming, which now produces about one-third of the world's soda ash. He also is the founder and chairman of Wold Talc Co., which has in west Texas what is believed to be the largest and most efficient talc mine in North America.
The career success led to extensive involvement in professionally-related organizations, including director of the Federation of Rocky Mountain States; vice president for Wyoming and South Dakota of the Rocky Mountain Oil and Gas Association; and president of the Wyoming Geological Association. In 1999 the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming named him the “Wyoming Oil/Gas and Mineral Man of the Twentieth Century.”
He also branched out into politics, inspired by participation in the successful presidential campaign of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952. He and Jane ran for two posts as precinct committeemen (they each won with three votes–their own and a neighbor's), and working for other candidates led John to try it himself. In 1956 he was elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives. Later he served two terms as Wyoming Republican State Chairman, was a member of the executive committee of the Republican National Committee, and served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1969 to 1971, the first professional geologist to serve in Congress. He was the original sponsor of the National Mining and Minerals Policy Act of 1970.
If that weren't enough, he became a leader in numerous community organizations, including the Boy Scouts, the United Fund, the YMCA, the Boys Club, and Little League baseball, and he was founding president of Casper's Hogadon Basin ski area.
He and Jane established the Wold Professorship in Geology at Union as well as the first fully-endowed chair at the University of Wyoming, the Wold Centennial Chair of Energy. Their concerns for science in college academics made possible the Wold Science Hall at Casper College, and in 1991 he received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Wyoming.
And, of course, he always remembered Union. He has been a term or emeritus trustee of the College since 1981, and in 1999 he received the College's Eliphalet Nott Medal, which recognizes alumni who have achieved great distinction in their fields.
Today, John and Jane Wold have the 30,000-acre “Hole-in-the-Wall Cattle Ranch” in southern Johnson County, Wyoming–a locale renowned in the annals of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “The Hole in the Wall is actually a dry arroyo that cuts back into an escarpment near the Big Horn Mountains,” he says. “Supposedly that arroyo is where the outlaws could hold off a posse.” The Wolds run an active cow/calf operation on the ranch, where every summer President Roger Hull enjoys trout fishing. “It's a fantastic place and an appropriate reflection of John's love of the outdoors,” the president says. “We fish, talk about the College, and then fish some more. It's hard for me to think of a more enjoyable way to spend a few days.”