Obituary: Mcculloh, Thane Hubert
Age 88
He remained intellectually engaged, determinedly free-thinking, and warmly gregarious until the end.
The second of three children of Hubert and Anna (Benz) McCulloh, Thane was born on July 25, 1926, in Glendale, California.
Following high school he enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II as a pharmacist’s mate.
He barely survived an enemy torpedo attack in the South Pacific and served as a Navy Corpsman in the initial wave at Iwo Jima, an experience about which he was silent until late in life.
“I was lucky to survive my nineteenth year,” he told the assembled family at his 80th birthday party.
“Everything else has been a bonus.”
After an honorable discharge from the Navy in August 1946, Thane was a man in hurry.
He enrolled in Pomona College, California within weeks and in three years earned an undergraduate degree in geology with highest honors.
The award of a Fulbright Grant in 1950 provided an opportunity to do a year of research abroad on the geology of the Oslo region of Norway under the auspices of the University of Oslo.
Upon his return he proceeded to a du al M.A.
and Ph.D. in geology from UCLA in 1952, (passing the foreign language requirement three times over-in German, French, and Norwegian-“which attracted a certain amount of attention”).
Thane’s passion and life’s work began with pure scientific research in sedimentary geology.
He pioneered the use of gravity readings to discern subsurface structures and densities, now an indispensable practice worldwide.
Over the course of a long and distinguished career, he worked as a faculty member at UCLA, California Institute of Technology, and University of California Riverside.
He was the recipient of Fulbright, National Science Foundation and Guggenheim Fellowships.
Across his career, he became highly regarded as a researcher, co-inventor, and ever-flowing font of scientific curiosity and insight.
He served with the United States Geological Survey from 1963 to 1982, conducting research from offices in Seattle and rising to head the USGS Division of Energy, Minerals, and Environmental Health in Washington, D.C.
He authored scores of significant scientific papers and publications and was chief investigator of the landmark “Santa Barbara oil spill” underwater well blo wout of 1969.
In 1982, the family moved to Dallas, Texas when Thane took a senior research position with Mobil Oil.
Eventually, his expertise led him into the field of petroleum exploration and, over the course of his life, to worldwide journeys and adventures in the search for oil and natural gas.
For Thane, every rock was a reliquary of time.
He loved this earth; it spoke to him and he spent a lifetime puzzling out its histories.
He also found its human inhabitants to be mostly wonderful, always worthy of amused observation, and source material for a thousand stories.
Thane came to define himself as a “citizen of the planet.”
Throughout his professional life, geology took him around the world-across the United States, Mexico, and Europe, as well as more far-flung places such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and very remote locales such as Alaska’s Brooks Range, the Chukchi Sea, and the offshore platforms of the North Sea.
(For years, he chose even vacation spots based on the intrigue of their sedimentary geology, thus bypassing such traditional holiday destinations as Hawaii, which is entirely volcanic.)
In his last years, having returned to Seattle, Thane, an observant draftsman since childhood, took up watercolor painting as a hobby and over the course of four years created many beautiful works of art.
Most feature places he has been and many have been featured in exhibitions at the campus of Ida Culver - Broadview in Seattle where Thane and MaryAnn have lived for the past four years, and where they have made numerous friends.
Thane is survived by his spouse Mary Ann (nee’ Jeffries), to whom he was married for 52 years, and with whom he had three children: Thayne (wife Julie), Paul, and AnneMarie (now Sister Joseph Marie, ODC), and by two sons from his first marriage: Doug (wife Dawn) and Kendall.
He deeply enjoyed watching the growth of his five grandchildren: Tristan, Marina, Katie, Annie and Emily.
Thane was very proud of each of his children and grandchildren, and followed their adventures and stories with interest.
The family would like to express its gratitude to Providence Hospice Seattle and in particular to Mary Keeffe and her staff at HomeWell Senior Care, including Alex, who provided such compassionate care during Thane’s final days.
He will be deeply missed by family, friends, former students and colleagues.
A Memorial Service and Celebration of Thane’s life was held yesterday in Seattle.
The family asks that those wishing to make a contribution in Thane’s honor consider directing them to either Pomona College, California or to the University of California at Riverside in support of student scholarships, or to a charity of their choice.