IN MEMORIAM
graduating with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Geology in 1949.
He married Marie Helen Mothes on June 23, 1951, in Hutchinson, Kansas and the couple moved to Denver where he was employed by Sinclair Oil and Gas Company as an Exploration Geologist from 1949 to 1954. They moved to Grand Junction in 1954 and along with his friends and partners, Ed Schuh, and later with Walter Fees Jr., he began consulting privately as a geologist.
Max worked within many civic organizations during his life. He enjoyed getting to know people and working together to make our community better. He served on the Board of Directors of the Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce and as President in 1968, served on the Colorado Petroleum Council in 1969, was appointed by Governor John Love to the Colorado Land Use Commission in 1970-1979, and served on the Multiple Use Advisory Board for the BLM from 1975-85. Max joined the Grand Junction Rotary Club in 1970 and served as President in 1985. He was one of the developers of the Redlands Village Subdivision. He was active in Club 20, Petroleum and Mining Club, Grand Junction Geological Society, and he served on the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission in 1985. He also served on the CMU Foundation board and was President in 1982. He was active on the advisory committee in 2015 for the Grand Junction Department of Parks and Recreation for the development of West Lake Skate Park and Canyon View Park.
Jon R. Lovegreen, CPG-04379 Irvine, California 1947 - December 6, 2020
Member Since 1978
The following is excerpted from a posting by one of Jon’s sons, Alan Lovegreen, and provided by Stephen Testa.
Jon Richard Lovegreen, a geologist, envi- ronmental consultant, loving husband, father, and grandfather, died of natural causes on Dec. 6, 2020 in Southern California. He was 73.
The eldest of four, Jon was born in Quincy, Illinois to Mary and John Lovegreen, and spent his early years in the Midwest. His family moved repeatedly when he was young, “something on the order of eleven times in eleven years,” he once wrote, eventually settling in the Fruit Basket of the World – Reedley, California. There Jon met his high school sweetheart and future wife, Laurie Manty, whom he sat next to “in successive rows in assembly.”
He attended Reedley Community College in the late 1960s and then went on to USC on a variety of scholarships. Upon graduating with a B.S. in Geology in 1970, he and Laurie married. Their honeymoon was a cross-country trip to the East Coast (in a red Fiat 850 coupe!) so that he could attend Columbia University for graduate school.
At Columbia, Jon worked as an engineering geologist and field geologist while Laurie taught fifth grade in New Jersey. He served as a micropaleontologist for the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory aboard the R/V Vema in 1972. He viv- idly recalled retrieving cores in the Indian and Atlantic oceans as the Vema maneuvered around storms, and was struck by the optical phenomena of the green flash at sunset. Jon back- packed through Africa and met Bob Incerti in Tanzania, which was the beginning of a half-century friendship.
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Oct.Nov.Dec 2021
Jon graduated from Columbia in 1973 with an M.S. in Geology after completing a substantial thesis titled and cov- ering the Paleodrainage History of the Hudson Estuary. He then worked for Woodward-Clyde Consultants doing fault and earthquakes studies for large engineering projects like hydroelectric systems, powerplants, high rise buildings, tun- nels, railroads, and pipelines; the work was worldwide – Iran, Switzerland, South Korea, Argentina, Greece, Algeria, Egypt, and India, as well as throughout the United States.
A lifelong traveler, during these years Jon constantly put new pins in the world map by backpacking through Africa, performing aerial surveys of seismic potential in protected airspace in the Middle East, and touring Europe with Laurie. He loved many places from these early travels: Mauritius, the Alaskan Range, Bermuda, St. Thomas V.I., Cape Cod, Boston, Upstate New York. Later he would add the Seattle area, San Juan Islands, Palm Springs, Mammoth Lakes, Southern England’s Jurassic Coast…
In the early 1980s, as “large engineering projects became a thing of the past,” he moved into the environmental field, working at early semiconductor facilities where releases of solvents into the groundwater prompted many of the under- ground storage tank regulation and environmental regula- tions of California. Then, in 1985, he and another scientist cofounded the California company Applied Geosciences Inc. Jon helped design some of the early leak detection and moni- toring systems that were used to create remediation programs for aerospace facilities, transportation facilities, and coatings manufacturers. Joe Frey, who worked with Jon at Woodward- Clyde and then at Applied Geosciences, remembered fruitful early morning breakfast meetings at a diner in Tustin and remarked that [Jon] “set the standards.” Some of his publica- tions that he authored or coauthored during that time reflect this shift from fault studies and reservoir-induced seismicity to his next career phase dealing with petroleum hydrocarbon investigation and remediation. In addition to his regulatory and technical expertise, Jon’s bedside manner also helped his clients understand the stakes. Dave Ridley recalls how he loved speaking with Jon “because he had this great ability to put himself in [others’] shoes (as if he was investing his own money in the deal).
After ten years of Applied Geosciences he went on to work for the consulting firm ATC and, in 2003, began serving as the Division and District Manager of Vertex Engineering Service Inc.’s Southern California office. He then completed his career as Manager of the Private Practice Group within Tetra Tech, Inc. Pam Andes describes how Jon would swap family photos and spend car rides to regulatory agencies or a lunch together talking about their families. Likewise, Jim Kennedy notes how he “always enjoyed talking to him, learning from him, surviving the crush of a transaction with him,” and said that Jon “was a guy you could trust and a guy whose judgment you could trust. And you could have a laugh with him amidst all the talk of contaminants, risks and remediation.”
His friends and colleagues found him to be “the consummate environmental professional […] calm, thorough, thoughtful (even professorial!), prepared and value-adding.” Jon “was always excited and wanted to solve the many mysteries that a job would present.” In addition to the profound satisfaction he found in his work, Jon also took pleasure in the merriment and friendship that welled up from the same source.
His colleagues recall some of these times and impressions. Imagine a fresh-out-of-college-hire, Paul Roberts, in the ‘80s, having to wing it for a meeting with the Mayor of Santa Fe
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