My Life and Times

By William B. Wray

My Life and Times is the narrative of a life both ordinary and extraordinary. The author grew up in the Midwest in a lower-middle-class working household. His immediate forebears lost their jobs and occupations, homes, and money in the Great Depression. His more distant ancestors emigrated from many parts of northern Europe and settled in what would become or was Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Although the author's family had little money, as the first-born of four children, it was understood that he would go to college. In due course, he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Utah, obtained a PhD in economic geology from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School. His professional career included work in the natural resources industries and in the law profession.

The author describes himself, his experiences and observations about life over three-quarters of a century, in a candid, authentic, and accurate way. His life has been that of ethnic mainstream White Protestant America, a category and subject rarely written about. He has observed from the vantagepoint of an ordinary person the social and economic environment of the times. Supported by a personal diary, correspondence, and photographs, this account is both factually accurate and objective. The story is a record of how his life and the lives of those around him including many relatives, friends, and associates evolved over time, as American and world societies developed and changed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781638818595

Book preview

My

LIFE

and

TIMES

William B. Wray

Copyright © 2022 William B. Wray

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-63881-858-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88763-349-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63881-859-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

My Life and Times

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Synopsis of My Life

Chapter 3: The Kind of Person I Have Been and Am Now

Chapter 4: The War Years in Pittsburgh (1943–1944)

My birth, naming, and first year

Family life in western Pennsylvania during World War II

1943

Chapter 5: Milwaukee and Saint Paul (1944–1950)

Life in Milwaukee (1944–1946)

Saint Paul (1946–1950)

Chapter 6: Park Forest Years (1950–1961)

Park Forest—a post-war planned community

Christmas, Easter, and other holiday celebrations at our home

Summertime when school was out

Family life growing up

1953

Scouting and summer camp experiences

Mystical events

► Religion and religious beliefs and practices, then and afterward

Childhood friends and activities

Elementary school and junior high school life (1950–1957)

High school experiences (1957–1961)

► Race, ethnic, religious, and cultural awareness, then until now

Summer jobs and after-school work

► Organized sports, athletic proficiency, and personal fitness

Mental illness

My early years collecting and displaying minerals

The collecting environment in high school

► Coin collecting, then and recently

► License plate collecting, as a young person and as an adult

Other childhood hobbies

► Piano, violin, guitar, singing, and general love of music throughout my life

Chapter 7: Salt Lake City, Undergraduate Years at the University of Utah (1961–1965)

Fraternity life at the U as a freshman

College life apart from the fraternity

Summer employment and school-year career-related jobs while in college

► Mineral collecting while in college, graduate school and afterward (1961–1985)

► Near-death experiences, while in college and thereafter

Chapter 8: My First Job as a College Graduate (Summer 1965)

Chapter 9: Graduate school, University of California at Berkeley (1965–1970)

Berkeley student life

Part-time employment while at Berkeley

Meeting and courting Eunice, our wedding

1968

Berkeley and Butte life with Eunice after our marriage (1968–1970)

Chapter 10: Work as a Geologist in Butte, Montana (1966–1969)

Chapter 11: Life in Salt Lake City and Work for Kennecott Exploration, Inc. (1970–1973)

Our married life, with me working for KEI and Eunice in Law School

► Chronic lifetime health issues

► Investing experiences in the early 1970s and beyond

► Jack W. Kunkler, and our investments together in raw land (1971–1973) and afterward

Matt’s death

Chapter 12: Cambridge, Harvard Law School (1973–1976)

Our journey back East and getting settled in Cambridge

The law school experience

Our student life in Cambridge, with me in school and Eunice working

My summer job after my first year at Harvard

My two summer jobs after my second year at Harvard

My decision to go to Salt Lake City and Eunice’s decision to stay in Boston, our divorce

Chapter 13: Salt Lake City, Professional and Personal Life (1976–1991)

Life on my own in Salt Lake City (1976–1978)

Employment as an associate and shareholder at Van Cott (1976–1985)

Marriage to and life with Brigitta (1978–1991)

Mineral exploration efforts with Dr. John E. Welsh (1976–1988)

1985

Employment as a partner at Cohne, Rappaport & Segal (1985–1991)

► Mineral collecting (1985 to the present)

Administration of Jack Kunkler’s estate, real estate purchases, and management for the J. W. Kunkler Trust (1985–1993)

► My mineral exploration efforts after John Welsh (1988–1995)

Chapter 14: London, Nimir Petroleum Co. (1991–1993)

Beginning the job and getting settled in London (1991–1992)

Work and life in London (1992–1993)

Termination of my Nimir employment and relocation back to Utah

Chapter 15: Park City and Milford, Utah (1993–2003)

Life in Park City, with Brigitta, Jessica, and Alex; Michelle and Nick

My efforts to earn a living as a sole practitioner lawyer

► Work as co-trustee of the Jack W. Kunkler Trust (1993–2006)

Sepa Resources, Inc.

2000

Western Utah Copper Company (2001–2003)

Decline of our marriage, transition to a new life, and divorce

Chapter 16: Milford (2003–2011)

Marriage in 2004 to Sarah

Life and work in Milford (2003–2011)

Western Utah Copper Company (2003–2005, and afterward)

Two financial milestone years (2006–2007)

► Family changes (2008–2020)

Our decision to leave Milford for Las Vegas

Chapter 17: Las Vegas (2011–2020)

Life in Vegas (2011–2020)

2020—the lost year and an uncertain future

Chapter 18: Seventy-seven Years Old and Counting

Chapter 19: Postscript—the Three Women Who Married Me

Forebears and Relatives

Chapter 20: My Parents and My Brothers and Sister

Overview of my family

William Bott Wray, my father (1913–1966)

Helen Johanna Hartzel, my mother (1917–2008)

Matthew Hartzel Wray, my brother (1946–1972)

Christine Johanna Wray, my sister (1950–)

Jeffrey John Wray, my brother (1951–2012)

Chapter 21: My Wray Grandparents and Their Other Progeny

William Wray, my grandfather (1882–1939)

Mary Elvira Bott Wray, my grandmother (1884–1980)

John Elder Wray, my uncle (1916–1981)

Mary Carolyn (Raven) Wray Rudnitsky, my cousin (1944–)

Margaret Jane Wray Hill Childers, my cousin (1947–2009)

John Elder Wray III (John Jr.), my cousin (1951–)

Mary Eleanor Wray, my aunt (1919–1985)

Chapter 22: My Hartzel Grandparents and Their Other Progeny

William John Hartzel, my grandfather (1867–1938)

Johanna Margaret Barry Hartzel, my grandmother (1885–1957)

William John Hartzel, Jr., my uncle (1914–2003)

William (Billy) John Hartzel III, my cousin (1938–1998)

Charles Michael (Mike) Hartzel, my cousin (1939–)

Patrick (Pat) Barry Hartzel, my cousin (1944–2017)

Nicholas (Nick) James Giovanni Hartzel, my cousin (1949–)

Chapter 23: Knowledge of My Ancestors Preceding My Grandparents

Introduction and overview

My third great-grandparents and their families

My great-grandparents and their families

John Elder Wray, my great-grandfather (1846–1896)

Mathew Huston Wray, my great-grand uncle (1842–1863), and the Civil War

Louis William Bott, my great-grandfather (1848–1914)

Other possible Wray relatives of my great-grandparents’ generation and younger

Michael Hartzel, my great-grandfather (1841–1910)

William Joseph Barry, my great-grandfather (1863–1912)

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

MY LIFE AND TIMES

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

—Theodore Roosevelt

What we have may be taken from us. What we have had, is ours forever.

—Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Chapter 1

Introduction

How should I compose an account of my life when I am not famous, rich, powerful, or notably accomplished? What goals should I have for this memoir? What should my motivation be?

Any autobiographical work should be attractive to the reader. Since the details of my life and accomplishments are not gripping of themselves nor particularly salacious or titillating, my approach to the task and style of writing will have to carry the load, such as it can. Readers of this book, perhaps including strangers to my life as well as people who know me, will need a reasonably interesting narrative to hold their attention.

I’ve organized this account episodically, beginning for the frame of reference with a brief synopsis of my life and my own perception of the kind of person I have been, and am now. My own place in this story starts with my birth and earliest memories. For both the synopsis of my life and the main narrative, I’ve included much less detail about the more recent decades of my life, as more fully explained below. Unless indicated otherwise explicitly or by context, when I refer to now I generally mean as of April 2021.

I’ve included accounts of the individuals in my immediate personal family, plus my brothers and sister, cousins, my parents and their ancestors and close relatives, and their places in the times and events of the day. These people have helped shape my own life. Similarly, my own existence has had an impact on and helped shape, for better or worse, the lives of my family members and some of my close relatives. I’ve deliberately kept discussion of my living relatives (including my two prior wives Brigitta and Eunice, and my present wife, Sarah) relatively brief and circumspect, with greater detail and more emphasis on the earlier years of my life and direct involvement with them than in the more recent history of my life. I feel that more discussion than I have included here would be presumptuous of me and perhaps viewed negatively by those persons themselves. They all have their own special stories to tell. It is not my purpose in this volume to be their unauthorized biographer, more than I have felt necessary in order to tell my own story.

My personal direct knowledge of my family history is limited and uneven. I have focused on information which has come down to me from various family sources fleshed out with some easily accessible public records. My emphasis has been on how their backgrounds and lives may have paralleled or differed from mine. None of these many people, whether dead or living, had to my knowledge or likely will have a biographer’s attention. This account is my meager and inadequate attempt at giving them a personal history for posterity.

On reflection, it seems to me my story and that of my extended family including near relatives is a story in microcosm of the larger tale of ordinary middle-class White Americans, both geographically and culturally. My family had no special or fascinating ethnic background, having by my time been nearly completely assimilated into American life, nor any remarkable crises or life-changing revolutionary events. Still, there are insights if not lessons which may be gleaned from discussion of past events, which may by themselves justify a reading.

I am now seventy-seven years of age. As I have grown older, I’ve often thought about the changes in the world during my own lifetime. I decided that an examination of my life and history given in the context of the broader circumstances and events of the time would be worth doing. My own narrative is not by itself compelling enough to engage the reader, even a family member. But perhaps when combined with snapshots of the larger milieu of the time told from my own vantage point, there will be enough of a story to hold the reader’s attention. The big story of the last half of the twentieth century continuing well into this century is how much everything has changed and how rapidly change has come about and continues to take place.

One purpose of this book is to illuminate these changes, both in my personal context and in the larger environment. When I was a child, my grandmother Johanna Hartzel told me that as a young woman of eighteen living in Jersey City, New Jersey, she was taken by her father in December 1903 to see the "third flight of the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. William J. Barry, having read about the initial three-second-duration unsuccessful attempt on December 14 in a local newspaper, journeyed by train with his daughter to Kitty Hawk. They were present on December 17 during the first generally accepted flights of a controlled heavier-than-air manned aircraft."¹ I was in awe of this historical vignette, because even as a youth, I appreciated how far back in time and scientific development my own family’s immediate personal experience reached.

I think the younger generation might find it interesting that there existed a world within my own lifetime when one got the news as well as all over-the-air entertainment, through the medium of a vacuum-tube enabled AM radio with only a tuning knob and a volume knob. The value of the US dollar has fallen throughout my lifetime due to the policies and practices of the US Federal government. When I was young, in the early 1950s, I could see a Saturday matinee movie at the local theater for the munificent sum of nine cents.² My parents would give me a dime, and I would use the penny change to buy some candy.

I intend this account to be read during my lifetime so that it might be of contemporary interest and relevance to the reader. Unavoidably, a number of persons mentioned are still alive. I have diligently tried not to embarrass them, nor depict anyone in an unduly unfavorable light, beyond the necessity of basic descriptions of persons and events important to the understanding of my own life and times. I generally subscribe to the philosophy that if one cannot say anything nice, or civil, about another, then one should say nothing. I do not believe there is any need to focus this narrative on the deficiencies or inadequacies of others, although inevitably some mention of these will be necessary to help understand and appreciate my own journey through life.

This does not, however, apply to my own personal history. My own life has involved plenty of instances of my own errors and shortcomings, the record of which helps explain who I am and how I have become the person, for better or ill, I am now. But this account does not delve into every embarrassing or unfortunate personal episode of my life. To do otherwise would be tedious, and anyway no one would care. Suffice to say, I’ve had any man’s share of such events, and in this regard, I’m no different than anyone else. Some of these events are so painful or uncomfortable to recall, I do not care to further revisit them in my mind by memorializing them in writing. I am quite sure most everyone has had similar experiences, recollections of unfortunate happenings or events, actions taken or steps not made, which are best left undescribed and in due course totally forgotten.

For the story of the most recent fifty years of my own life, in addition to my memory, correspondence, photographs, and other records, I’ve been able to refer to a series of daily diary booklets (my diary), which I began in June 1971 and have continued to the present time. I’ve kept my diaries as a useful helpmate in getting through life. My diary booklets began with book # 1a, and now I am into book # 303. Each day ordinarily is memorialized on two facing pages, sometimes more, each about four by six inches, and presently these handwritten records total about thirty-seven thousand pages. My booklets began solely as a daily appointment, expense and exercise record, with sketchy or incomplete entries. Over the years I’ve enlarged the scope to include to-do lists, musings and plans for the future, and memoranda of events or activities. However, I’ve not been a slave to entering items in the books. Many times, my most interesting and busy days had only minimal or no written entries. There is much minutiae of interest only to me. I hope, however, that these booklets may be preserved after I am gone as a larger and more complete historical record of some specifics of my life and time.

In addition to my diary, I’ve also kept certain business and expenditure records, photos, letters, and miscellaneous other testimonials of my activities and thoughts, some placed into photo and activity albums much like scrapbooks. I’ve tended over the years to keep these ephemera rather than routinely discard them, although many of these items for years prior to 1976, and especially during my childhood years, were thrown away or lost. Most copies of my professional work as a geologist, lawyer, and businessman over the years have been routinely discarded or destroyed as having no future use nor value.

In this account of my life, I’ve deliberately included the names and some descriptions of numerous people I have encountered along the way. Many names first mentioned and/or sometimes later are given in bold type, which indicates people I have personally known and who in retrospect I consider to have been particularly important or significant to me or my life story. This is, of course, a subjective determination. All the persons named in this memoir (plus many others whose names are omitted inadvertently or due to space limitation) were or presently are significant to me in one way or another. I wish I could have included in a fair and balanced way everyone who has meaningfully affected my life for better or ill. For the most part, these are all ordinary people, about whom little is or will ever be written. However, in so many ways, such people have shaped or guided my life’s development. To them, whether for good or bad, I extend my appreciation and, for many, my thanks. Supporters of me and my path through life have been a huge personal help to me over the years. Even my adversaries have helped through their own actions and attitudes to guide or shape my way. Perhaps some of them will chance to read this account and enjoy or appreciate seeing their interaction with me, for however brief or extensive the time, as set forth here.

Also set out in bold type are some important dates where first mentioned and/or sometimes later, particularly birth, marriage, and death dates for family members including ancestors and relatives, and some dates of importance for some other persons or entities. The names of some of my ancestors or distant relatives which are important to my family history but which I did not personally know are also given in bold. Names of companies I had a personal involvement with as organizer or owner, and a few other names of particular importance to my story plus my former addresses and vehicles owned are also given where first mentioned and/or sometimes later in bold.

One reality of getting older is one loses friends, associates, acquaintances and family members to the grim harvester of us all. I myself have lost both my grandmothers, my only aunt (who never married), both uncles and their wives, at least three cousins, both my parents and my two brothers to death, which in some instances was far too premature. Both of my grandfathers died before I was born. Many friends and persons I worked with over the years have passed on. Several others have slid irretrievably into senescence. I have become more conscious of the fact that any account such as this must be written early enough in the uncertain span of one’s existence so as to permit completion with reasonable coherence. However, this is a balancing act, in that writing too soon means the story is incomplete and perhaps not adequately grounded in life’s experiences. I hope this may be judged a good time for me to have proceeded in this venture.

In this or any autobiographical work, subjectivity necessarily has somewhat shaped the narrative. I’ve consciously striven to be as objective as possible and as accurate in facts and detail as memory and personal records have allowed. I’ve done this for posterity; as mentioned, no one is likely to write my biography. I’ve also rejected false embellishment or fictional elaboration, as tempting as such might be to include in an attempt to make my modest story more interesting, stimulating, or exciting. This is not a novel or other work of fiction, and I trust will not be considered as such in any way. To the extent I was able, I’ve kept to a completely truthful and balanced account subject only to my decisions to exclude certain afore-referenced events or episodes.

In this volume, within paragraphs, when words in italics and marked by double quotation marks ( ) are attributed to a particular person (including myself), these are his, her, or my exact words as heard or expressed by me or contained in letters or other written documents which I have seen. In the interest of truthfulness and objectivity, I have made no changes to the language of these expressions. In addition to attributed quotes, there are many such passages in italics bracketed by double quotation marks, which have no stated attribution. In each of those instances, except where the context clearly indicates otherwise, the language is mine and is taken verbatim from my daily diary books. The foregoing applies as well to stand-alone passages in italics, which by literary convention are given here without double quotation marks.

The bulk of this book is the narrative of my life and times. I’ve arranged the story chronologically, organized by important periods in my life and secondarily by topics of importance to me. Most topics are specific to the time periods given, but some topics, identified in the Contents page and in the headings by an arrow (), cover a longer time period appropriate to an understanding or appreciation of the topic. I have given more attention and detail to events and experiences earlier in my life, thinking that they might be of greater interest or significance to the reader than the events of my more recent life.

Chapter titles and principal section headings in the text are shown in the Contents page. Descriptive headings of secondary sections in the text, not shown in the Contents page, are marked with a diamond (◊) symbol. Headings for subsections under some of these secondary sections are marked with a double diamond (◊◊) symbol. I’ve included these other headings for clarity and the convenience of the reader.

For the most recent two or three decades, for the most part, I have restricted my narrative to events or occurrences, which, in my opinion, are of particularly worthy interest or illustrative significance. I have done this because to include all the more recent events in my life would overwhelm the reader with an intolerable quantity of details. I expect that the more recent chapters of my life in general would prove to be both more familiar and also less interesting to family, friends and other readers. Some of these events might even be sufficiently fresh to prove awkward or uncomfortable to the reader, which is not my purpose. Should I revisit this project in twenty or thirty years, it may be that events which I have not included here will then in retrospect be of sufficient interest to warrant inclusion in a second edition of this book.

I’ve not intended this work to be a scholarly exposition with every reference or assertion fully documented or analyzed in endnotes or footnotes. The relatively few endnotes which I have employed cover some details of possible interest, plus references to a few particular sources utilized or quoted in the text. I’ve generally not documented the specifics of most of the many other sources of information used to write this book. Such sources include my own records and personally assembled family documents, the genealogical work and family historical records made or put together by numerous family members dating back many decades and information concerning family and world events widely available on the Internet and elsewhere. For genealogical fact-checking and information on some early members of my various family trees, I’ve consulted census and other public records accessible on the Internet. I’ve also examined public family tree information compiled by non-family members on Ancestry.com’s website. Some of this information is contradictory. Where possible I’ve tried to determine the true particulars concerning birth, death and other relevant information concerning my ancestors and their kin.

In writing this account, I struggled with questions of scope, inclusiveness and scale. I at first considered including much detail available to me from my diary and other records, but for this first edition, I decided not to attempt such a comprehensive account. I continue to explore my life ahead, and preparation of this retrospective could not take precedence over events and goals still in front of me. Especially for family members, and perhaps for others with some interest in me and my life, I considered it better to complete this work now in its somewhat abbreviated—though still lengthy—form rather than later, perhaps never.

The reader will observe that I have included information on my closest relatives as well as my antecedents. As noted, it is not my purpose here to write their biographies except to the extent that details and statistics of their lives may help illuminate and flesh out the times, circumstances, and events of my own life. Such information on their lives which I’ve set down here also might be useful to family members wishing to connect with others in our extended family. The details might permit a better understanding of their relationships to me and me to them. What I have set forth here is my own limited take on their lives, from my unique and subjective vantage point. Surely (for those who are alive) their understanding of their own lives would differ, perhaps markedly, from my own understanding. Perhaps they will find my perspective on their lives interesting and instructive.

Thus, this story of myself and my antecedents’ and other relatives’ life histories is condensed or abbreviated, relative to what might have been written. My accounts of the lives of these other persons are largely limited to sources which were available to me, as described above. I’m certain there are some errors in my account of this information, but none are intentional. I would welcome a further examination of the subject of this account, including even an exploration of my own personal history and character should anyone in the future care to pursue this Wray family biographical research. In any event, the stories of my life and my family members’ lives are subjects which can be further developed and told in the future by anyone with an interest. I hope this volume will constitute a decent jumping-off point for such effort.

We all are products of our own heritage and force of nature, but even more so the products of our environment. This environment includes the physical, financial, and emotional circumstances of our personal world as well as the lives of the many persons with whom we interact both casually and intimately. All of this shapes us and makes us who we are. This is my own account of this journey.

Chapter 2

Synopsis of My Life

In life, you must play the hand you are dealt. How well you play it determines your outcome.

One of my core beliefs.

I was born during the midst of World War II, on November 5, 1943, in western Pennsylvania. I was the first child of William Bott Wray and Helen Johanna Hartzel Wray. My family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when I was about one-year-old. Brother Matthew Hartzel Wray joined our family on April 7, 1946, while we lived in Milwaukee. Shortly thereafter, Dad moved us again, this time to Saint Paul, Minnesota. We lived there in a pleasant older neighborhood of small houses with leafy trees in the yards and some nearby vacant lots and alleys for exploring. I attended kindergarten and most of first grade there. My sister Christine Johanna Wray was born on January 13, 1950, in a hospital in Saint Paul.

In the spring of 1950, the family moved to Park Forest, Illinois. When we moved there, the fledgling town was a post-war, city-scale suburban development. The community was built from scratch out of the flat cornfields, marshy patches, and scrub forestland of the northern Illinois prairie at the southerly limit of exurban Chicago. Park Forest was an ideal place for a child to grow up in, with much open space for roaming and play. My first school was a row house of newly built rental homes converted for that purpose, but from second grade on, my classmates and I attended purpose-built schools, as the community gradually built out and took on its final form.

My brother Jeffrey John Wray was born on September 15, 1951, in a hospital in nearby Chicago Heights, thus completing our family. Our first home in Park Forest, which still stands essentially as it was then, was at 60 Elm Street. This small rental two-story duplex unit had only two bedrooms, plus an unfinished basement, so our family of six was pretty crowded. A year or so later, we moved next door to 58 Elm Street, a slightly larger unit which came with an attached carport and a small bedroom over the carport. We were still crowded, certainly by today’s standards, because soon afterward Grandmother Johanna Hartzel moved in to live out the rest of her days with us. After she died in 1957, Christy took over the third bedroom. Matt and I shared the second bedroom, and Jeff slept in my parents’ bedroom. We all shared one small bathroom. This was our home and my life until I graduated from high school at age seventeen in June 1961. I left Park Forest to go away to college in August of that year.

As a child, my parents were simply the parents, the only ones I knew well and the pair which for me defined parenthood. Beginning during my high school years, I became aware that in fact they had markedly different personalities and other individual attributes. I came to realize as an adult, with the perspective that raising one’s own family engenders, that my parents were not well suited for each other. Dad in my recollection was easygoing and rather laid-back, without ambition or significant work ethic. He had a handsome big-man’s imposing presence and a gregarious and attractive personality. Both men and women liked him. Dad’s upbringing was loving and tolerant, probably to a fault. Mom was brought up by a strict and demanding mother and a remote and somewhat disengaged, old-world-mentality father. Mom was ambitious, and Dad’s lack of success as the breadwinner I’m certain caused much disappointment and resentment in Mom and tension in the marital relationship.

I use the appellation Mom often throughout this book, as for most of my life that is how I addressed or referred to my mother. However, Matt and I sometimes as children and young adults referred to her more formalistically as Mother, despite the rather cold connotation. Mom was the female head of the household and deserved if not demanded that old-time mark of respect. When I was very young, perhaps until age twelve or so, Mom was often Mummy (Mommy) to me, just as Dad was Daddy. My use of Mother derived, I’m sure, ultimately from Grandmother Hartzel’s strict way of raising her own children. On the other hand, my father to me always was Dad, a more relaxed term than Father, reflecting I believe his easygoing personality as well as his more outwardly affectionate upbringing and manner toward us children. I was closer to Mom than to Dad, and my mother was more dear and emotionally important to me. Dad was a father figure more than a friend, which as a child and young adult seemed normal and was sufficient. Our family viewed in retrospect was not close, even though in its own way certainly loving. I have no recollection of parental mistreatment. To the contrary, both Mom and Dad may have been overly lacking in child-rearing discipline, both physical and mental, an aspect of my upbringing, which carried over to my own child-raising. We children were allowed much freedom to pursue, or not pursue, what we wished, perhaps not the best way to raise children. I knew both then and now that my parents despite their own parental inadequacies truly loved me and my brothers and sister.

Our family never had much money when I was growing up, and we were close to the bottom of the economic scale even by the modest middle-class standards of Park Forest. My interests as a child and youth revolved around play and sports, and somewhat later, collecting. Coin collecting particularly fascinated me, as there was the prospect of finding a valuable coin in ordinary pocket change, the cost of which would be only its face value. I started rock collecting at the age of about eight and a half, in the early summer of 1952. I know, because I kept a written record which I still have. Even from a young age, I found satisfaction in cataloguing possessions and in documenting certain aspects of my life.

At about that time or somewhat later, I also started collecting stamps, campaign buttons, baseball cards, match covers, license plates, and comic books. I continued with these hobbies to a greater or lesser degree throughout high school and for license plates some years afterward. I think my early attraction to collecting things came in part from the vague realization our family had less of many material items, and that money (the lack of it) was always an issue for family survival and well-being. I was conscious growing up of our limited financial circumstances and the evident fact neither Dad nor Mom was able, for whatever reasons, to do much about it. Dad did not put money aside for the family, and we always lived month to month. My modest collecting activities were for me a way to get things of interest and value to me, however meager or slight the results. Our family never owned a home, but always rented. A collection gave me a sense of identity and measurable worth, when other possible indicia—home ownership, good clothes, lots of toys, expensive food, ample spending money, extravagant vacations, and the like—were absent.

My childhood as I recall was mostly happy, blessed as I was with a mother and father who loved and took care of me and a stable home life. I had playmates and the opportunity and freedom to explore and enjoy my neighborhood with friends. In Park Forest, there were open grassy mall areas and playgrounds which permitted a great outdoor experience. Even with our family’s limited finances my parents made sure we children had presents at Christmas, some summer camp experiences, and short family vacation driving trips in the summer. Dad did not do many activities with me, which was not considered abnormal for the times at least in my circle of acquaintances, but I always knew he was there for me as a father. Our home from the mid-1950s on had an old upright piano, which Mom occasionally would play. She had taken lessons as a child and at one time was quite accomplished. I taught myself to play the piano and read music using Mom’s classical sheet music and a 1950s-era songbook which I still have and use from time to time.³ My parents were supportive of my various childhood activities including participation in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts which they both encouraged and arranged. I pretty much took all this for granted as part of growing up in an ordinary family, but I now realize my sheltered life was the product of loving parents, a racially privileged environment, and a simpler and quieter time.

High school for me was not a wonderful time. I was pretty much an outsider, shy, not athletically accomplished, nor initially much of a student. I started to grow and otherwise physically mature very late. Not until my sophomore year in high school did my voice start to change. The combination of my late entry into puberty and the fact I started schooling early due to my November birth date meant I was literally the youngest-appearing boy in my high school class of about three hundred. My childish, undeveloped appearance contributed understandably to strong feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Some of my classmates made fun of my physical immaturity, especially in the locker room after gym classes where my lack of maturation was most evident. Sports participation was not an option, so I joined the chess club. I also participated during my senior year in the high school orchestra, following a one-quarter instrumental music class in which I studied the violin.

My mental abilities were slow in maturing, so my freshman and the first half of my sophomore years were only mediocre academically. However, beginning in the latter part of my sophomore year my mind started to click or get it. I found myself understanding concepts and facts I was not able to before, and the challenges of various school classes became manageable. By my senior year I was able to do well in classes. In fact, I was recognized as having the best grade-point record for my senior year of anyone in my high school class. However, valedictorian and other academic honors deservedly went to those students who did well throughout all four years of high school. I achieved Honorable Mention for National Merit Scholar, lacking only a 99th percentile in English (I tested in the 97th percentile) to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship.

I attended high school during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Three fearsome concepts were very real: The Soviet Union and communism were a formidable threat to the US and the Western capitalistic economic system, a war with the Soviet Union including an invasion of America by Soviet troops was a distinct possibility, and a nuclear Armageddon was not only possible but perhaps inevitable. These concerns always lurked in the shadows, around corners, often unspoken but never far from consciousness. Even if war might not reach North America, conflict in Western Europe was felt widely to be inevitable, and perhaps imminent. The launch of the satellite Sputnik on October 4, 1957, was a nationwide wake-up call and made a particular impression on me. I decided to study Russian beginning with my junior year, which language was then newly made available to some of the better students. Also, I tried to do the best I could in math and science classes. I graduated from high school in June 1961.

As our family had little money for my college schooling, I went west to attend the University of Utah. The U had a very low-cost out-of-state tuition and, in addition, offered me a small academic scholarship, thanks to Mom’s application efforts. I had maintained my interest in minerals throughout high school and thought it would be good to get a degree in mineralogy. At the time, Utah was one of only two colleges which offered such a degree. Also, the state was located within the scenic mountains of the western US, which appealed to me. The other school, Penn State University, happened to be my father’s and general family’s alma mater. While I would have enjoyed attending that fine school and Dad would have been thrilled, unfortunately its out-of-state tuition was several thousand dollars per year. Because of this unaffordable cost, that school was not available to me.

At the beginning of my freshman year at the University of Utah, I joined a social fraternity at the urging of my father, who recognized I was as green a high school graduate as there possibly could be. I was almost totally inexperienced in the ways of adult life, in particular socially and with the opposite sex. While my chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha unfortunately folded after my freshman year in college, this experience went a long way toward maturing me. My high school experiences had hardly prepared me for the larger world outside. Nonetheless, it was fully understood that I had to go out into the wider world and make my own way. I had little money in college, as my parents had minimal surplus funds they could give me for room and board. We all knew I had to make it on my own, which in due course I did. Although I returned to Park Forest generally once a year to see the family at Christmas, after high school basically I was gone for good from home. At Christmas during my sophomore year, my parents gave me an inexpensive Mexican-made acoustic guitar. This instrument was my regular music companion all through college and graduate school. Singing for myself and playing the guitar as accompaniment gave me much pleasure and solace. In hindsight, I wish I could have been physically closer to my brothers and sister, not to mention Mom and Dad, during that time, but it was not to be. My situation was accepted as normal and natural, part of the process of growing up and leaving the nest. I graduated from the University of Utah with an Honors Bachelor of Science degree in mineralogy, Magna Cum Laude and member of Phi Beta Kappa in June 1965.

Because I studied hard and got good grades in college, obtained a high score in the graduate school entrance exam, and had strong recommendations from several of my professors, I had a choice of graduate schools. These choices including Harvard, Stanford, the University of Chicago and Columbia University. I chose the University of California at Berkeley because they offered me a good scholarship, and it was in California which to me was a magical place full of promise. The Department of Geology at UC Berkeley was very well regarded, in fact then probably the finest geology department in the world. I also was infatuated with the folk singer Joan Baez and her marvelous voice, and Ms. Baez was then living in California. While I was there, from 1965 to 1970, Berkeley was the intellectual and activist epicenter of college opposition to the war in Vietnam. I was blessed with a 2-S student deferment, thanks to luck of the lottery draw and a favorable selective service board location. Joliet, Illinois, because of demographics including many poor and minority-rich neighborhoods, had more than its share of volunteers and eligible draftees within its geographic borders. I was strongly opposed to the Vietnam war and did some petition work and other opposition pursuits but did not actively participate in any of the many campus or community antiwar demonstrations and riots.

During my Berkeley years, I met Eunice Sue Kan Chen, a beautiful Berkeley undergraduate student of Chinese American ethnicity from Honolulu, and we were married on September 1, 1968. I elected in one of several fateful, life-shaping, fork-of-the-road decisions to do my PhD thesis research on the structure of the veins (mineral deposits) at Butte, Montana. This was one of the world’s great copper mining districts and the flagship property of The Anaconda Company. I did my thesis field research under the supervision and guidance of the renowned academician and economic geologist, Professor Charles Meyer. Before finally leaving Berkeley, I spent several long stretches of time in Butte between 1966 and 1969. I was employed as a geologist for Anaconda while I was working on my thesis research. Dad died of complications following lung cancer surgery on September 19, 1966, while I was working in Butte. My time at UC Berkeley did not end well, due to scientific disagreements with Professor Meyer. I left California in early September 1970 before completing my thesis work. With the strong support of my two other thesis advisors, and not least my wife Eunice, my thesis was eventually approved, and I received my PhD degree in June 1972.

I went to work following my Berkeley/Anaconda experiences in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a research economic geologist for Kennecott Exploration, Inc. (KEI), the exploration research subsidiary of Kennecott Copper Corporation (Kennecott). Due to my low regard in Professor Meyer’s eyes, neither employment with Anaconda nor a teaching position was available to me. Anaconda and Kennecott then were the world’s two leading copper mining companies, each with extensive mines and other holdings in the US, Chile, and elsewhere. It was considered an honor and a privilege to work for these companies, and they employed the best geologists and research scientists at their mines and laboratories. I started work with KEI for $14,000 per year, considered a very good beginning salary at the time. My Anaconda experience was valuable and among other things taught me the applied science and skills of mining geology. My time with Kennecott was a revelation, as it opened my eyes to the advanced state of the science of the occurrence and discovery of ore deposits. While I learned much about the geology of ore deposits while at Berkeley and with Anaconda, my real education in this field of knowledge came during the three years I spent with Kennecott.

Eunice had graduated from Berkeley while we were there. Once we knew we would relocate to Salt Lake City she applied for and was granted a place in the University of Utah law school class of 1973. I was able to look over her shoulder as she went through law school, and I was intrigued by what I saw of the law profession. At the same time, I came to realize my long-term employee prospects as an economic geologist for Kennecott, or indeed within the industry generally, were not good. The mining business was cyclical and unpredictable, and the national economy was under stress in the early 1970s. As a consequence of excessive federal government spending on the Vietnam War and expensive domestic programs, inflation took hold. On August 15, 1971, President Richard Nixon froze wages and took other action, including ending convertibility between US dollars and gold, in an attempt to check then rampant inflation. At about the same time, on July 16, 1971, Chile under socialist President Salvador Allende completed nationalization of the major copper mines in Chile. These mines included Kennecott’s huge El Teniente (The Lieutenant, a.k.a. Braden) underground copper mine as well as Anaconda’s giant Chuquicamata open-pit mine. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, with Eunice’s support and encouragement I quietly applied to Harvard Law School for enrollment. Thanks in part to good grades in undergraduate and graduate schools and a 759 score (out of 800) on the LSAT, I was accepted for enrollment in the fall of 1972. However, Eunice would not graduate until June 1973. For that reason and for other professional and business reasons, I decided to defer (without guarantee of readmittance) admission to the law school. Fortunately, in due course, Harvard accepted me again. In the summer of 1973, I resigned my position with Kennecott.

Among Eunice’s acquaintances at the Utah Law School was a smart, ambitious, and thoroughly free-thinking student in the class year ahead named Jack W. Kunkler. Eunice happened to talk to Jack about the desirability of land investment, and this sparked Jack’s interest. I met with and got to know Jack. We decided to go in together on a real estate investment provided we could figure out how to pay for it. Neither of us had any money to speak of. Eunice and I by dint of poverty-level spending habits had saved a few thousand dollars. Jack had similar money put aside or otherwise accessible. We saw an ad in the real estate section of the Wall Street Journal offering for sale a large tract (in two parcels) of mountainous land in the extreme southwestern corner of Salt Lake County. We bought this land, totaling 1,686 acres, on long-term contracts beginning in December 1971. We did not have the means to pay off the contracts, but we had hopes and plans to be successful.

We subsequently bought other, nearby undeveloped mountain land, both in Salt Lake County and in adjacent Utah County. These purchases also were on an almost-no-money-down basis. We sold off portions of these other lands and used the proceeds as we received them over many years to make the necessary contract payments on our land purchases. These activities occupied much of my spare time from late 1971 in Salt Lake City through my years spent in Cambridge and afterward when I returned to Salt Lake City. The culmination of all this effort came in January 1979 when we received the deeds to both parcels, said land being the profit realized from all our hard work. Jack and I often commented to ourselves that we could have written the classic how to turn $5,000 into a million dollars in real estate book. This effort and commitment by both of us and our wives, however, came at a personal price.

While employed with Kennecott, I happened to observe that one of my coworkers, geophysicist Don (Skip) Snyder, would jog during his lunch hour a distance of two miles. I regarded this as an amazing feat of endurance. While I always was relatively active and athletically inclined as a youth, and rode my bike out of economic necessity during my college and graduate school days, my first real job at Kennecott was rather sedentary. Most of my time was spent in office work, and field work was rarely strenuous. Travel on the expense account meant for the first time in my life ample opportunity to eat three full meals per day. By the summer of 1972, I had ballooned up to 165 pounds, all of which extra weight had gone to my belly. I could visualize myself on the path to obesity, as Dad had done several decades earlier. I bought what became a life-changing book, a paperback self-help volume entitled Aerobics by Kenneth H. Cooper. This book among other things emphasized running as a way to improve one’s cardiovascular system and manage one’s weight. My brother Jeff at that time was an accomplished cross-country and marathon runner, and brother Matt had run cross-country competitively in college. Thus, I felt I should be able successfully to take up jogging. I resolved to try to get myself into shape and lose weight. I still recall my first jogging attempt. I ran about one-quarter mile in the parking lot of the Student Village where Eunice and I lived before stopping due to a stabbing side pain. But I continued to work at it, and eventually, I got to the point where I could jog several miles at a moderate pace. Jogging gradually became a regular part of my exercise routine, and my weight over the next year or so came down to 155 pounds, about where it remained for many years thereafter. Running as exercise helped counterbalance the stress of law school and the demands of my subsequent professional careers.

My brother Matt died during my time with Kennecott in Salt Lake City. I always felt he was the brightest and most able of us four children, but he was also the most troubled. After a long struggle to control depression, he gave up his determination to live and took his own life on December 6, 1972. He was only twenty-six. His death was most hard on Mom given the dreadful circumstances. There was no will. Matt had precious little to leave to his family, but I inherited several keepsake items which I still retain and treasure. Eunice and I in August 1973 scattered some of his ashes near Park Forest. On our driving journey from Salt Lake City to Massachusetts we went into the Forest Preserve and affixed a small memorial engraved metal plaque on the side of a stone and wood footbridge. This secluded and peaceful place was one of Matt’s favorite bird-watching areas. I visited the site once again years later, but the plaque was no longer there.

Harvard Law School was a struggle for me and took a fatal toll on my marriage to Eunice. We as usual lived on very little money; by most standards people would say no money. Eunice found a job as a librarian in a Boston law firm which helped pay the bills. Of greater significance was the huge commitment in time the law school plus my sideline work on the real estate purchases and sales necessary to keep the land purchase payments current required. Harvard for me was all the overwhelming stress and struggle it was advertised to be in popular accounts such as The Paper Chase published in 1971 by a Harvard Law School 1970 graduate. Unfortunately, despite much studying especially during my first two years, I was only a mediocre B to B-student. I graduated undistinguished, somewhere near the middle of my class. My third-year grades were much the same as the first two years, although I studied considerably less. I learned that my mind seemed not to work like that of the typical Harvard Law School student (and professor). No amount of study or preparation could make me into an A student. However, I took several Harvard Business School classes and there did very well. I had the option and seriously considered obtaining a joint Harvard JD/MBA degree, but that would have required a fourth year of study. Considering my deteriorated marriage and that by June 1976 I had spent twelve years in college, I did not have the heart nor ambition to stay for a thirteenth year.

Eunice and I separated after I graduated. She stayed in Boston and I left for a law job with Van Cott, Bagley, Cornwall & McCarthy (Van Cott or VCBC) in Salt Lake City. Van Cott was the leading law firm in Utah, with many very able and a few ruthless and unscrupulous attorneys. The practice of law did not come easily to me. My mind for some reason does not handle legal research easily, and as in law school, I found that particular aspect of being an associate difficult. It took me several years to get to the point of being comfortable as a legal advisor to clients. However, I managed to make enough good impressions with clients and my law firm superiors that in due course I was admitted to partnership (as a shareholder) in the firm. Among other things, both before and after making partner I was offered the opportunity by clients to leave the law firm and go to work in their legal departments. I declined those offers.

Soon after returning to Salt Lake City after law school, I reconnected with my immediate boss at KEI, Dr. John E. Welsh. After KEI terminated its Salt Lake City presence in early 1978 and laid off the last of its staff, John continued to do geological consulting work. He had an entrepreneurial streak and respected my own business and scientific acumen. We decided to pool our talents to see if we could be successful in mineral exploration and development. We formed WXW Partners in early 1979. Over a few years, we investigated a number of resource opportunities in Utah. We ended up staking a number of gypsum mining claims in various parts of Utah plus several large claim blocks on the east side of the San Francisco mining district in Beaver County, Utah. After several difficult years of attempted fundraising, in the fall of 1986 we were successful in raising money for an initial drilling program on part of our San Francisco district claims. The objective was to find near-surface veins of silver-lead-zinc mineralization. We drilled two series of shallow holes, first in late 1986 and again after raising some more money in the first half of 1988. These holes failed to discover any ore. In December 1987, Welsh and I dissolved WXW Partners and split between ourselves the ownership of most of our unpatented mining claims. After our unsuccessful drilling in 1988, John had no further interest in exploring in the San Francisco district. He retained no claims in the district, but I kept some of them.

Welsh and I were able to establish commercial value in one of our gypsum claim groups. This particular claim group covered a large surface exposure of bedded, high-grade gypsum on the west slope of the San Rafael Swell adjacent to Interstate Highway I-70 in central Utah. We split up the I-70 gypsum claims in late 1987. The following year, I sold my half to Georgia-Pacific Corp. (G-P) for a nominal cash payment, plus a small reserved royalty. John farmed out or sold his half to a Richfield, Utah company. For a number of years afterward that company mined and sold small tonnages of high-grade specialty use gypsum rock. G-P beginning in 1990 mined and processed a moderate tonnage of gypsum rock from its I-70 claims for a few years and paid me a small quarterly production royalty. Eventually, due to the relatively high cost of trucking the rock to its Sigurd, Utah wallboard plant, G-P ceased mining there. Events of 2001 caused the company to close its wallboard plant, and in 2008, the entire processing operation was shut down for good. In 2017, the company demolished the plant. At the present time G-P still owns the plant site and retains the gypsum mining claims I located so many years ago.

The close working partnership: between Jack Kunkler and me, that by dint of hard work and much sacrifice had accomplished our goal of paying for our Butterfield and Rose Canyons (B&RC) land purchase and other land purchases, did not otherwise prosper after my return to Salt Lake City. Although both of us were busy working for our respective employers (Jack continued to be a trial attorney with the Salt Lake Legal Defender Association until October 1978), we tried after-hours to work the same property acquisition magic as before. We tried unsuccessfully to acquire several large tracts of undeveloped land in western Salt Lake County and central Summit County east of Park City. We actually came close to acquiring both of these wonderful properties. Ultimately the dollar amounts involved and the monetary requirements of the sellers were too much to handle. Both of these large land tracts subsequently, as we had expected, became much more valuable.

Eunice and I were separated for about two years, during which she went her own way in Boston and elsewhere. We had no realistic expectation of ever getting back together again. I met Brigitta Mahn Sorenson, who was born in Germany and had come to the United States with her first husband. She was divorced and had two lovely young children. We got married on September 9, 1978, shortly after my divorce with Eunice became final. I had purchased in 1977 a house at 2709 E. Kenton Drive, and we moved in there. After our marriage I formally adopted Brigitta’s children, and they became Michelle Lucienne Wray and Nickolas (Nicky) Robert Wray. Our daughter Jessica Ulrike Wray was born on June 24, 1980, and our son Alexander (Alex) Gustav Wray was born on April 26, 1982. We bought a large house in 1982 at 718 Northview Circle, in the high avenues overlooking downtown Salt Lake City.

The year 1985 was a watershed year for me personally and professionally. John Welsh and I early in the year almost severed our WXW Partners partnership. The relationship survived this nadir and lasted with difficulty until December 1987 when we ended it due in part to our inability to see eye-to-eye on partnership issues and in part to John’s troublesome personality. I was informed on January 8, 1985, that Marlin Oil Co.’s second Nevada oil well had proved along with its first well to be a dry hole. On John Welsh’s recommendation I had invested several tens of thousands of my precious dollars into drilling those two holes. The failure to discover oil caused the complete loss of my investment.

On May 30, 1985, Jack Kunkler died from an intentionally self-administered drug overdose. I was named Personal Representative (executor) of his estate pursuant to his Will and a co-trustee of a multi-million-dollar insurance-proceeds trust he had created before he passed away. For the next twenty years, I continued in the role of co-trustee, during which time I had the sole responsibility for the purchase and sale of trust real estate. The property I purchased for the trust during my tenure increased in value from less than $1 million to over $50 million. A portion of this land was sold