Exchanging holiday cards helps keep us in touch with long-time, faraway friends. It also can let us know when someone we like has passed on.
I first knew Robert E. Locke when we were 1977 energy fellows at Stanford University's Professional Journalism Fellowship program. He was a reporter in the Associated Press's Albuquerque bureau when I was one at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City. With Paul Andrews, from the Seattle Times, and John Wolcott, from the Everett (Wash.) Herald, we audited engineering classes and took numerous field trips together in the 6 months we were there.
It quickly became apparent that Bob had the most direct oil and gas industry exposure, having grown up in Houston. He also knew more science than the rest of us, but never tried to show how smart he was. Whether on a drillship off southern California or on Alaska's North Slope a few months before the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System went into operation, he simply asked the best questions.
Once, as we concluded a tour of Stanford's linear accelerator—at 2 miles, the world's longest building where particles are shot at high speeds and their properties are examined—Bob announced with a grin, "I want one of these for my back yard!" Paul, John, and I quickly agreed he could build one.
He became AP's science editor for the western US soon after our fellowships ended. I lost touch with him and his wife Val until last year, when I found an address for them in Austin and sent them a card. He wrote back that he had retired a year earlier as publications director at Austin's Bat Conservation International. Their two sons had married and moved away, and they were looking forward to more happy years together.
Battling cancer
Val's letter in mid-December said Bob, a lifelong smoker, was diagnosed with advanced-stage small-cell lung cancer in January and given 1-2 years to live. Chemotherapy reduced his grapefruit-sized tumor to the size of a peach pit, and he and Val took one last trip to New York to see their oldest son, John, and his wife. Bob suffered a heart attack in New Jersey en route and died 2 days later on Oct. 2.
I think of him when I get a rare opportunity to write an oil and gas story that's not about government or politics. Bob showed me how exciting technology can be in this business, and why geologists and engineers enjoy finding ways to overcome challenges. When I'm with them, I try to think what Bob Locke would want to know, ask those questions, and always get terrific answers.