Richard W. Faas: A Tribute
Dick Faas passed away, sort of by surprise, on September 19, 2014. When I talked to my mentor and friend, he was dealing with a new health wrinkle that he planned to endure while finishing another paper about sedimentology.
Faas, didn't teach as much as "INFECT" young people with the wonder of his field trips and his stories. Geology is storytelling about outdoor explorations with stock embellishments of data tables, maps and cross-sections. I remember him showing our group outcroppings of limestone, shale and very hard sandstone ("This is the Oriskany Sandstone!") and he stood down in the bottom of a glacial outwash basin, looking up at us, as if to beg for our comprehension. The ice sheet was gone, but the melt water moving under it had dug that basin out. We were cold, shivering, but this was the "stuff of real living" to me. Right then and there, I wanted to be a geologist.
Roll the film of time a little further, and Faas is taking me on a field trip to witness plastic silt. The two of us have on diving masks, snorkels, swimming gear and sneakers. We are in a gravel quarry pond out in front of a gravel washing flume. Dick has already shared the cautionary tale of dead fishermen wrapped up against the side of the gravel pit, lifeless, underwater in their fishing line."Watch out for monofilament!" ..Shudder. Now, watch how we can make this blanket of mud undulate! I learned something that day, 'If you can't build a flume, get a mask and snorkel and visit a river. I spent a lot of time in small rivers gliding on the surface and looking down. Later, to study sand dune structures that were buried 10,000 feet down in a Montana oil field, I drove 200 miles to a dune buggy recreation area in Oklahoma and borrowed a ride on a sand rail. The dune cut-away pictures looked just like the Montana core and I had made my own discovery.
Throughout his days, Dick was always interested, always encouraging. I am glad that I knew him. Thanks, Dr. Faas!
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