The "Deprovincialization" of Mel Esrig and Laurie Kennedy
It was 1959 when Ralph Peck, D.J.L. (Laurie) Kennedy, and I travelled by train from
Champaign, IL to Tulsa, OK for a meeting with Creole Oil Company on the subsidence
problems resulting from oil extraction in Lake Maricaibo, Venezuela. Laurie, a structural
engineer and later a professor at the University of Toronto, was doing his Ph.D. research
on the collapse of oil well casings as the ground subsided. My research was on the
consolidation of heavily-over consolidated shales when subjected to increases in effective
stress associated with oil extraction.
A several-hour layover in St. Louis between trains was followed by dinner on the train as
we rode on to Tulsa. The time in St. Louis was spent on a Ralph Peck-guided tour of the
Eades Bridge and several other bridges, complete with a history of their construction and
the place of the bridges and of St. Louis in the Civil War and the "opening" of the West.
As we sat down to dinner, Laurie admitted that he had never had a Manhattan cocktail
and I, much to my embarrassment, admitted that I had never eaten pumpkin pie. That set
Dr. Peck on a mission of deprovincialization. We all had cocktails. Laurie had his
Manhattan, and I was treated to pumpkin pie for dessert.
Ralph Peck was never one to miss an opportunity to teach his students.
Melvin I. Esrig, Ph.D., P.E.
This letter is an excerpt from the Geo-Strata Feature on Professor Peck, Geo-Strata September/October 2008.
