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Inductee Number 1, Doodlebugger Hall of Fame
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William Earl "Bill" Blakeley Bill Blakeley is a doodlebugger's doodlebugger, probably the all-around best I ever knew and he definitely belongs in the Doodlebugger Hall of Fame. Many GSI'ers who hired on after 1960 or so probably thought of him as GSI's most outstanding marine guy and that is what he was best known for but for many years he was also an outstanding land doodlebugger. By the end of his career in the 1980s he had done just about everything a real field doodlebugger could do! He had been a helper, a surveyor , a driller, an observer, a party manager, a supervisor and a manager, all that in a span of 40 years. He had been in something like 40 countries on all the continents except Antarctica. I would like to know how many air miles he logged in his career - it was many millions. Bill began his career with GSI in 1946, about a year after he was discharged from the Army. During WWII he served with Mark Clark in North Africa and with Patton all the way from Anzio to Austria, mostly as a forward artillery observer where he learned surveying - and as a top sergeant he learned leadership. He came home with three Purple Hearts, a piece of metal where part of his skull used to be and a burning desire to enjoy life to its fullest. He was in Dallas one day when he saw an ad in the paper that GSI wanted surveyors so he applied for the job and was immediately hired and sent to Grand Isle, Louisiana where GSI had just started up the first real offshore crew, party chiefed by John Babb and working for Calco (now Chevron). No electronic positioning was available, so they had 4 or 5 surveyors on the beach with a transit on a little tower, each cutting in the water spout made by the shot in order to determine positions. It was primitive but it worked on clear days and when the crew was not too far from shore. But after a few months of this, Calco hired a new company called Offshore Navigation who had some war surplus Shoran equipment which worked better than the manual efforts, so Bill was transferred to John Sturdevant's marsh crew working out of Houma, LA. He was a pretty wild character in those days, well known in every bar south of Highway 90 and famous for starting fights and then standing back while his friends did the fighting. He was also famous for wrecking cars, having wrecked every one he had owned up to that time. Shortly after being transferred to the marsh crew, he wrecked one that nearly did him in - he was hauled away in an ambulance with a broken back. But after an operation and a couple of months in the hospital he was in a body cast and ready to go back to work. Sturdevant didn't know quite what to do with him when he learned that Jack McManus was starting GSI's first Observer's School so John sent him to Dallas to go to that school - probably the best thing that could happen to Blakeley and his GSI career. It was just after he returned to the crew in April of 1947 that I met him for the first time when I visited Sturdevant's crew (and a few weeks later was there). The first time I saw him he was walking out of the marsh with three joints of portable drill stem on his shoulder - and still wearing a body cast!! He was a drill pusher at the time, working with an old Higgins marsh buggy that had less power than a lawn mower! After I was transferred to that crew, we soon became good friends, a friendship that has lasted to this day. We have been as close as brothers, which neither of us had; working together; raising hell together; getting married together; raising families together and climbing the GSI ladder together. He's by far the best and closest friend I've ever had. We were still on Sturdevant's crew working from a quarterboat in the Atchafalaya Basin out of Krotz Springs, LA near the end of 1947. Bill was as a brand new Observer and I was First Computer. Our Supervisor, Ewen Gaby, told us he was leaving GSI to form Delta Exploration and offered each of us a job. Neither of us had yet developed a real attachment to GSI so we strongly considered the offer. GSI heard about it and called the two of us into Dallas where they made us an offer we couldn't refuse--more money than either of us had ever seen or expected to see! We stayed on and it was probably the life-changing decision for both of us! It was at that time that Bill developed the qualities that made him a Hall of Fame doodlebugger. He was a natural leader whose skills had been honed by his WWII experience, and that experience also gave him the confidence that no job could be so tough that he couldn't do it. He led by example - when the going was tough, he was out in front. I remember two incidents, which illustrate this quality. While working in the Atchafalaya Basin in the winter of 1948, we awoke one morning to a temperature of 8° F. We were working in swamp covered with 2 -3 feet of water and deeper in spots. We debated whether or not we should go to work that morning. Bill had left his recording instruments in the swamp and the crew had to get them out. So out we went, walking through the frozen woods, breaking ice in puddles until we were knee deep in icy water and breaking ice with every step with the last setup of yesterday still a long way into deeper water where there was a good chance that water would go over the top of hip boots in places. By this time most of the crew was colder and more miserable than they had ever been. Bill called a break to look the situation over and I will never forget how some of the crew built and huddled around a miserable little fire on top of a stump trying to get warm while standing up to their knees in that cold water. Pretty soon, Bill said "There's no need for everyone to get wet but I need a few volunteers to get that equipment up to higher ground." Everyone looked at each other but no one moved. Bill said "OK, let's go" and took off into deeper water breaking ice as he went. After a moment's hesitation, the whole crew followed him and soon came back with the equipment, the wettest, coldest bunch of swamp rats I had ever seen! After that, they would follow him to Hell and back. Again, in a similar situation a couple of years later, we were starting a new crew in the bays back of Grand Isle. It was winter and cold but not too bad working from small boats where you could keep reasonably dry. With a green crew we soon ran into trouble. Some one hollered at Bill, who was working on the instruments, that the cable was caught underneath the rudder. Bill didn't look up, just said "Somebody go over the side and get it loose". Everyone looked at that cold water but no one moved. Pretty soon Bill got up, pulled off his clothes, dove over the side and came up with the cable, his teeth chattering from the cold. When he had dried and warmed up a little he looked at the whole crew on the little boat and said "The next time I say jump I don't want to see anything but bare asses"! From that time on he didn't have to ask twice to get a tough job done. Bill's experience grew ever more varied. After working every environment in Louisiana (where there is lots of environment!), he moved on to a land crew in South Texas as Observer and later onto a marine crew working offshore Texas as Party Manager. Then he moved back and forth between marine and land crews for several years, working in Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. When activity began in the North Sea he started up several crews there, hiring vessels, training crews and spreading his experience. He came back to the States in 1964 to start and for a while run the first GSI crew on the East Coast. About that time, GSI acquired a license from Marine Engineering, who had a patent on the streamer, as we know it, which allowed GSI for the first time to build their own streamers. Bill was tapped to start up a streamer factory, GSI's first, in Berwick, LA.. In late 1965, I was transferred to Houston as Eastern U.S. Manager and after several years apart, Bill and I started working together again. We were in the early years of digital operations when we still had an exclusive on both recording and processing and the clients in the Gulf of Mexico were demanding more crews than we could furnish. We worked out a plan to field 6 or 7 new marine crews in the early spring of 1966 and as usual I asked Bill to do the real work while I took the credit! He was put in charge of this vast mobilization which had to be accomplished between February and May and he made it happen, on time and on budget. This was an even greater accomplishment than the North Sea startup in 1963. Following this success, I was sent to London to run EAME and Bill came along as Marine Operations Manager. He made me look so good that I was asked to move to Dallas to manage worldwide marine operations and I agreed, but only if Bill would come along. I knew who could do the work while I went to meetings! Bill came to Dallas in January of 1969 and became the key man in marine field operations from that time until his retirement - in fact after his retirement, as he continued as a consultant working on marine startups for a couple of years after he officially retired. As you can see from reading this, Bill had a very successful career, a real doodlebugger from the first to the last day, a guy who worked hard, played hard and demanded that everyone around him do the same. He was responsible as much for my career as his own. I advanced mostly on his successes and I owe a lot to him. I have no doubt that he is a Hall of Famer in anybody's book!
I respectfully nominate Bill Blakeley for the Doodlebugger Hall of Fame.
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