Roy Clark Kepferle
Roy Clark Kepferle, born December 28, 1926, in Greeley, CO, to Dorothy Gladys (Ayers) Kepferle and Joseph Royal Kepferle, died on October 9, 2022, in Port Tobacco, MD, at the age of 95. The cause of death was end-stage renal failure.
A lover of rocks, nature, and family, Roy was the eldest of five boys. Growing up in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains in the small Plains town of Dover, CO, in Weld County, surrounded by Ayers and Clark cousins including his “twin cousin” Gladys Ayers, Dad survived the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, his father’s practical jokes, and the antics of four younger brothers. When teaching his brother’s gun safety, Roy took his dad’s shotgun, and after telling them never to point it at anyone, pulled the trigger and blasted his parents’ mattress. On another occasion, in the era before Frisbees, they ran out of cowpies to toss and instead found old cracked plates at the back of the cupboard—Gramma’s antiques from her Kellogg family. Dad’s fond memories of growing up included singing, memorizing poems, hiking and fishing in the mountains, and getting his first car, a Model A Ford. Near the end of WWII, he signed up for the Army Reserve at age 17 at Fort Logan, CO, on May 20, 1944, and began studying pre-engineering at Fort Collins College A&E (now Colorado State). That summer, as part of the Army Specialized Training Program, he transferred to Yale University to study Japanese with classmates who called themselves the Ronin, or leaderless samurai. After turning 18, he entered active service on March 16, 1945, with the US Army’s 24th Infantry Division, formerly the Hawaiian Division (with Taro leaf patch). After basic training at Camp Maxey, TX, on the Red River, he was assigned again to study Japanese at the University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities. On February 27, 1946, he shipped out from Camp Beale, CA, as part of the US Army Occupation of Japan. During the 16-day voyage, he became sick, temporarily lost his hearing, and was hospitalized at Camp Zama, south of Tokyo. With his fellow translators dispersed, he was transferred to the HQ company as an administrative NCO, based first at Okayama on Honshu and then on Kyushu. He rose to the rank of technical sergeant and after seven months in Japan was honorably discharged at Camp Beale on November 25, 1946, having received the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the Army of Occupation Medal.
Returning to civilian life, Roy took a year off to work and follow his love for rocks and the mountains, including hiking Longs Peak, CO. In 1947, he began studying geology as an excuse to get out in nature, receiving his BS in Geology/Earth Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1950. As a beneficiary of the GI Bill, he wanted to give back to his country, so he joined the United States Geological Survey (USGS) in 1950. After a brief stint in Washington, DC, he mapped eastern Montana uranium, coal, and shale deposits. While in Miles City, MT, Roy met Rhua Ethel Slavens on a Valentine’s Day blind double date. Married in Miles City on October 27, 1951, they moved wherever his USGS assignments took them, with children being born at each stay: Grand Forks, ND (Mary Rose); Rapid City, SD (Michael), where he completed his MS in Geology/Earth Sciences at South Dakota School of Mines in 1953–54; and Denver, CO (Gregory). When the USGS sought a Japanese-speaker to work in Tokyo with Japanese geologists to analyze Japan’s data on coal, gas, and uranium explorations from China and the South Pacific, Roy volunteered, despite being lead geologist on a project in the Dakotas. In 1956, with three children, Roy and Rhua traveled to Japan on the USS General William Mitchell, a converted troop carrier. The family enjoyed life in Tokyo and returned to the States four years later with two more children (Anne Marie and Mary Elizabeth). When assigned to map central Kentucky, Roy moved his family to Elizabethtown, KY, at the end of 1960, where sons Christopher and Matthew were born. Life in Kentucky included long Sunday drives through the country singing cowboy songs, stopping for road cuts, and stalking the wild asparagus as well as geology field trips and fishing with his children, teaching geology at the local community college, and participating in Cursillo and retreats at the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani. Once, because of his knowledge of the Kentucky backwoods, he joined a search party and saved the life of a toddler who had been lost for over 18 hours.
Having been impressed by his Japanese colleagues respectfully calling him “Doctor” Kepferle, Roy took a study leave from the USGS in 1968, completing his PhD in Geology/Earth Sciences at the University of Cincinnati in 1972. With the family move to Cincinnati, daughter Theresa was born. After a brief stint on an early shale gasification project, he retired from the USGS in December 1981. In 1982, he accepted a professorship in the Department of Geology at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, KY, where he enjoyed taking his geology students on summer field trips to Dillon, Montana. After retiring from EKU in 1994, Roy and Rhua enjoyed researching genealogy and visiting family before Rhua’s death in December 2011 after a long illness.
With many of his children and grandchildren living near Washington, DC, Roy moved to Greenspring Senior Living Community in Springfield, VA, in 2014. There he actively engaged in dialogue groups on race, religion, and the environment, sang with the Choristers, and especially enjoyed the square and ballroom dancing groups, where he met his beloved friend and companion, Penny Showell. Throughout the years, his natural curiosity as well as his love for family and planet Earth inspired him to travel to Italy, Germany, the Grand Canyon, Denali, Yosemite, and the far edges of the North American continent from Tomales Bay to Iceland.
Roy touched many lives with his generosity, his teaching, his puns, and his classic martinis. He volunteered with civic and church groups wherever he lived: 4-H, the Optimist Club, and PTA (Elizabethtown, KY); the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the Avon Woods Nature Center (Cincinnati, OH); and the Fairfax County Volunteer Solutions, the Greenspring Catholic community, the Democrats, and Greenspring Players theater group (Springfield, VA).
When asked what is most important for humans to think about in the universe, Roy combined his scientific curiosity, his love for humanity and nature, his gentle humor, and his personal faith. He replied that we need to think about the vast enormity of space and of time, the infinitesimal tininess and briefness of the human life, and the importance to do the most good we can with the life we are given. And then he added, “And God is in there somewhere.”
In his last days, interspersed with snippets of poems and songs, and musings on geology, the paradigm shift of continental drift, and sedimental feelings, Roy shared bits of his wit and wisdom: “Gravity—it’s the law.” “Depends —the greatest invention since fire.” “Life is a mystery.” “Spinach— to hell with it!”
When asked what he loved most about his life, Roy responded, “What a wonderful family I’ve had. What an enjoyable life I’ve had. What loving people I’ve met. A wonderful world.”
Roy passed softly from this life into the mystery on October 9, 2022, leaving his family and friends grieving his absence but celebrating his life and grateful for the love, joy, and delight they shared with him.