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My Background
I have been interested in rocks since I was a child. Before I reached
school age, my first recognizable drawing was of "woks" (rocks).
While still in grade school, I made my first find:
it was not a recognizable fossil, per se, but an ordinary lump of coal which had fallen onto our driveway, presumably from
the back of my uncle's pickup truck. No amount of reason served to convince me that the glittering rock, which
could be burned as a fuel, was not a treasure. Dad said it was worth about a nickel, tops--I held onto it anyway.
After I grew up, Dad took me for a ride in his small Cessna
airplane--we toured Haskell County from this, for me, new vantage point. Dad pointed out the natural
fault lines that lay below us, and explained how his observations, as well as information he had gleaned from maps of
the area, led him to the conclusion that natural gas reserves lay under the ground, just waiting to be tapped.
Dad,
Charles D. Roye, built a successful family business from the ethereal stuff of his wildcatter's dream, and I was privileged
to play an integral part in his plan's fruition.
My own interest in geology, and my resulting passion for
fossils, has led me in quite a different direction than Dad's life quest has led him, but I like to think that
I've inherited Dad's gift for identifying likely places to prospect.
Whether the love of the hunt is in my blood, or whether it grew
from a seed Dad planted in my mind long ago, I do not know, but I invite you to vicariously share my journey as
I explore the mysteries that Haskell County and the surrounding areas of eastern Oklahoma have to offer.
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