Memorial to John Thomas Knight Stark1887-1984

E. C. D A PPLES 13035 98th Drive, Sun City, A rizona 85351

R. M. GARRELS 140 Seventh Ave. South, St. Petersburg, F lorida 33701

G. F. BROWN 2031 R oyal Fern Court, Reston, V irg inia 22091

Certain uncomm on men lead exceptionally full lives; John “Jack ” Thom as Stark was one of these. He was born in Jackson. Tennessee, September 1, 1887. His m other died when Jack was only 9 days old and he was placed in the care of his “aunts,” actually his father’s nieces. He graduated from the local schools and worked locally as a bookkeeper, office manager, and auditor. This was a man of small stature, of extraordinary physique and vitality, who lived actively to the age of 97 (died May 10, 1984).

In 1916 he found his life in Tennessee inadequate and worked his way to Portland, Oregon. Enroute he met Carl Beecher, then Dean of the School of Music at Northwestern University. Beecher recognized S tark’s rem arkable intellectual talents and interests in all

natural things, and convinced him to enter Northwestern as a freshman, where he could study geology under the great teacher Ulysses S. Grant. Except for much of the year 1918. when he was in the U.S. Navy, he continued his undergraduate studies, dem onstrating exceptional interest in both geology and English literature (B.S., 1921, M.A., 1922). Dr. Grant recognized S tark ’s abilities and energy, nurtured his interest in geology, introduced him to the Precam brian geology of northeastern M innesota, and added him to the faculty of his departm ent.

Stark continued his graduate studies at the University of Chicago (Ph.D ., 1927). His colleagues there also were exceptional. One was M. King H ubbert. a trusted predictor of future world oil reserves; another (S tark’s room m ate) was John Scopes, a principal in the famous Tennessee evolution trial.

D uring this time as a graduate student and as instructor in geology at Northwestern, S tark and Beecher continued to be close friends. Both were interested in music and art. As the years passed, they became collectors of etchings, assembled an im portant library of English literature, and made such books available to interested students. From time to time. S tark offered special courses in the D epartm ent o f English, and his vast experience in art. literature, and science made him a m aster teacher. His influence in broadening the horizons of his students was immeasurable.

Professor Grant was a magnetic man. deeply immersed in geology and teaching. He had married into the well-known Winchell family, of which two were original Fellows and early presidents of the Geological Society of America, but he was getting physically old when Stark became his understudy. Nevertheless, they led field trips into the Lake Superior region of Minnesota; set about to understand some of the complexities in rock types, their structure, and stratigraphic correlatives; and generally to savor this attractive, primitive region. Unfortunately, Grant died in 1932; Stark, w ithout his old teacher, leader, and friend, began to work in other areas.

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In the same year (1932), Arthur Howland, fresh from Princeton, was appointed to the Departm ent of Geology at Northwestern. He brought an interest in the petrology of the M ichigan-M innesota Precambrian and the research ability to investigate it. He also had a strong love for English literature. Howland was great medicine for Stark. In many respects they were much alike; they became staunch colleagues and exceptionally loyal friends. For several years they returned to the studies in Minnesota, but this was to be more or less halted when they became im portant members of the Northwestern project that had been organized by C. H. Behre, Jr., to map South Park, Colorado, and adjacent m ountain areas. 1932 was also the year Stark became a Fellow of GSA.

Som etime before 1935, Beecher, who was always quite frail, decided to voyage through parts of the South Seas in search of some locality where his health might improve. In the Society Islands he found such a spot and forthwith resigned his university post to live in Tahiti, where he purchased a coconut and vanilla plantation. In subsequent visits to Tahiti, Stark developed an interest in the volcanics, particularly of Borabora, Raiatea. and Moorea; he set about to develop techniques for identifying characteristics of individual and coeval flows. Later he was to return to this interest when he joined the U.S. Geological Survey to continue similar mapping in Guam.

Two significant events in S tark’s life occurred about this time. The first was his marriage to a young and pretty Tahitian girl; the second was the involvement of the United States in World W ar II. From the marriage, which was severed during the latter stages of the war, came S tark’s beautiful daughter, Teura. She spent her early years in the islands, but later came to the United States to be reunited with her father.

Between intervals of mapping in Borabora, Stark was asked in 1937 to join a party, chiefly of California geologists, to undertake structural studies of the Precambrian of the Grand Canyon. The canyon was then still poorly known, and traversing certain rapids with wooden boats equipped only with oars was extremely hazardous and time consuming. Unfortunately, there were also problems of jurisdiction, as well as mistakes in preparation, and very little publication resulted.

Sometime in the mid-1930s. Stark met Oliver Jahn, an Evanston. Illinois, resident who was knowledgeable in financial matters, and the two developed a friendship which was to grow for more than 50 years. Jahn guided Stark in organizing his financial condition. Although they saw one another only occasionally after S tark’s retirement from professional life, they renewed their staunch friendship during three separate round-the- world cruises on freighters.

Stark had a personality which attracted people. He was never long in becoming part of the group of writers, artists, local politicians, geologists, and others, wherever the place might be. He enjoyed young people and invariably developed a strong rapport with graduate and undergraduate students. He was their confidant, good friend, and often their benefactor. Wherever Stark arrived, the social life was enriched, as when he brought musicians, artists, and writers—including Charles N ordhoff and James Norman Hall— into a closely knit group who enjoyed one another thoroughly during their stay in Tahiti.

In 1940, having returned to Northwestern from Tahiti, Stark became interested in mapping the Precam brian of the Los Pinos and M anzano Ranges in New Mexico, but this came to an end when the U.S. entered World W ar II. Stark, who was then 56, enlisted as a captain in the U.S. Army Air Force, and was assigned to the Arctic-Desert- Tropic Inform ation Center. His duties were to help develop route descriptions between the U.S. and Panam a, various countries in South America, North Africa, and China. Also, his group prepared survival manuals, intelligence reports, and a handbook on Burma for Air Force personnel. By 1944 he was transferred to the Office of Strategic Service where he was chief of a division attached to the 15th Army of Great Britain for the second Burma campaign. Later, as a major, he was commander of a final briefing

M E M O R IA L TO JOH N THOM AS KNIGHT STARK 3

cam p on Ceylon, and liason officer with the British assault troups in Penang and Singapore.

The excitement and im portance of his war experiences in the Far East left their mark on Stark, and when in 1946 he returned to Northwestern, his old research areas of the Precam brian of the Southern Rocky M ountains no longer satisfied his professional interests. One might say, after an initial enthusiasm devoted to a research project, he was ready for a different problem in a new place. Perhaps this is why he was never recognized by his peers as a great geologist. Yet, he was a reader of the literature, was cognizant of and understood new concepts, and always was ready to test them in new territories. He had been the first to recognize the sedimentary rock ancestry of the granitoid rocks in the Sawatch Range, dem onstrating that some had never been completely fluid.

In 1949 he took leave from his professorship at the university to become assistant to the D irector of Strategic M inerals of the Economic Reconstruction Administration; however, when he believed his task to be accomplished, he returned to Northwestern. One year later (1952) he resigned from Northwestern to join the U.S. Geological Survey party mapping Guam. His responsibility was to dem onstrate his methods of identifying and correlating individual flows, and to this end he did much of the mapping. Soon thereafter (1954-1955) he became chief of the group carrying on similar studies of Truk. According to S. O. Schlanger (who some 25 years later went to Northwestern as Deering Professor of Geology), invariably Stark organized an im portant social life at each island. It was he who gathered together professional people, sometimes including the governor, into a cosmopolitan group of many cultural interests; he had staunch friends everywhere he had been.

By 1958 S tark had completed his work on Guam and Truk, whereupon he was loaned by the USGS to the State D epartm ent in support of its aid to the universities program in Brazil. There, he taught special courses in geology at the Universities of Recife and Sa5 Paulo. Despite the fact that he never learned to speak Portugese, he became an im portant member of the faculties. He was so much respected by the students that during a m ajor revolt, which involved the burning of a building, he was able to convince them to resume an orderly protest without its former violent aspects.

Eventually, at the age of 76, he retired from professional service, returned to Jackson, Tennessee, and began an active career in journalism , reviewing books for local papers and journals. He organized, and was active in, various societies devoted to poetry; until the time of his death, he participated with groups of poets and writers in sections of eastern and southeastern United States.

Stark had three great loves to which he devoted most of his life; namely geology, literature and the world of culture, and friends he could gather in stimulating conversation and writing, wherever the geographic locality. He was at home everywhere, but eventually he grew restless for a new part of the civilized world, where he could meet new interesting people. He was not an explorer of poorly known regions; rather he loved the civilized world, its art, literature, and professional people.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY OF J. T. STARK1927 T he p r im ary s t ruc ture o f the K ekequab ic Grani te ; J o u rn a l o f G eology, v. 24. p. 723-733.1929 A g u aw a i ron f o rm a t io n o f n o r th ea s te rn M inneso ta : E conom ic G eology , v. 24, p. 528-541.1930 Precam br ia l water- la id tu f f in the B a rab o o , W isconsin distr ict: J o u r n a l o f G eology , v. 38,

p. 466-471.1932 Igneous rocks in the B a ra b o o District , W isconsin : J o u rn a l o f G eology, v. 40. p. 119-139.

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1932 (and Barnes , F. F .) T h e s t ruc tu re o f the S aw a tch Range: A m er ican J o u rn a l o f Science, v. 24, p. 471-480.

1934 H eavy m inera ls in the T er t ia ry intrusives o f cen tra l C o lo rad o : A m erican M ineralog is t , v. 19,p. 586-592.

____ Reverse fault ing in the S aw atch Range: Geological Society o f A m erica Bulle tin, v. 46.p. 1001-1016.

1935 (and Barnes . F. F .) T he corre la t ion of P re c am b r ia n gran ites by m eans o f heavy minera lanalyses: Geological M agazine , v. 72, p. 341-350

____ (and Barnes . F. F .) Geology o f the S aw atch R ange . C o lo rad o : C o lo ra d o Scientific SocietyProceed ings , v. 13. p. 467-479.

____ M igm at i te s o f the S aw a tch Range, C o lo rad o : J o u r n a l o f Geology, v. 43, p. 1-26.1936 (and Behre. C. H ., J r . ) Tom ich i D o m e flow: Geological Society o f A m erica Bulle tin, v. 47.

p. 101-110.1938 Vesicula r dikes a n d subaeria l pillow lavas o f B o ra b o ra , Society Islands: J o u r n a l o f Geology.

v. 46. p. 225-238.1939 (and Sleight , V. G.) S tra t ig rap h y o f the Knife Lake series in the K ekequabic-O gishkem unc ie

area. M inneso ta : Geologia l Society o f A m erica Bulle tin , v. 50. p. 1029-1041.____ (and M a x so n , J. H .) Relict f rac tu re cleavage in paraschists : Geological Society o f America

Bullet in, v. 50. p. 1529-1534.____ Discussion: Pi l low lavas: J o u rn a l o f G eology, v .4 7 , p. 205-209.1941 (and D app les , E. C.) N e a r shore coral lagoon sed im ents f rom Raia tea , Society Islands: J o u rn a l

o f Sed im en ta ry P e tro logy , v. 11, p. 21-27.____ (and H ow land . A. L.) G eology o f B o ra b o ra . Society Islands: Bishop M u seu m . H ono lu lu .

Bul let in 169. p. 1-43.1943 (and N o r to n . J. J . . an d S taa tz , M. H.) B edding slip m o v em e n ts in fault b locks sou thw est o f the

L o s P inos M o u n ta in s . N ew Mexico: J o u r n a l o f G eology , v. 51. p. 48-55.1946 (and D apples . E. C.) Geology o f the Los P in o s M o u n ta in s . N ew M exico: Geological Society o f

A m erica Bulle tin, v. 57. p. 1121-1172.1949 (with o thers) Geology and origin o f S o u th P ark . C o lo rad o : Geological Society o f America

M e m o ir 33. 188 p.1956 G eology o f the S o u th M a n z a n o M o u n ta in s . N ew Mexico: N ew M exico Bureau o f M ines and

M inera l R esources Bulletin 34. 46 p.1958 (and others) M il i ta ry geology o f T ru k Islands, C aro l ine Islands: U.S. Arm y. C h ief Engineer

Intel ligence Division. Office o f Engineering H e a d q u a r te r s . U.S. A rm y Pacific. 205 p.1959 (and o thers ) M il i ta ry geology o f G u a m . M a r i a n n a Is lands , P a r t s 1 and 2: U.S. A rm y.

Intell igence Division . Office o f Engineering H e a d q u a r te r s . U.S. A rm y Pacific. 282 p.1963 Pe t ro logy of the volcanic ro cks o f G uam : U.S. Geological Survey Profess ional P a p e r 403-C.

32 p.____ (and H ay , R. L.) Geology and p e tro g rap h y of volcanic rocks o f the T ru k Islands, eas t Caroline

Is lands: U.S. Geological Survey Profess ional P a p e r 409. 41 p.____ (and Tracey. J. I.. J r . ) Pe t ro logy o f the volcanic rocks o f G uam : U.S . Geological Survey

Profess ional P a p e r 403-C. p. C 1-C 32.1964 (and others) G enera l geology of G uam : U.S . Geological Survey Profess ional P a p e r 403-A,

p. A 1-A 104.

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