2005 President Charles Carter

Charles Carter - November 2012

I was born in Portland, Oregon, in 1939. As a young boy I remember trips to the beach with my parents and just going off by myself to collect agates and fossils. Later on would come a trip to the Priday Ranch for thunder eggs and to Idaho to visit my maternal grandparents and look for agates and petrified wood in the Weiser area.

2005 - CHARLES CARTER

After three years in the Army, I studied geology at Portland State College and took classes from Professors Hammond and Van Atta (Professor Allen was on leave the first year I was there, and I don't remember why I didn't have a class from him my second and last year there.) After graduation in 1964 I went south to look for work and ended up as a field assistant/lab tech for the Alaskan Branch of the USGS at Menlo Park, California. After a year there, I returned to school at San Jose State and from there went on to Johns Hopkins, where I met and married Sally.

I then took a job with the Ohio Geological Survey, and worked out of Sandusky, Ohio, for 10 years on research largely related to Lake Erie shore erosion. Our two daughters, Katy and Anna, were born there. We then moved to Akron, where I taught for 19 years as a sedimentologist/stratigrapher in the Geology Department at the University of Akron.

We moved to Beaverton in 2001, and Professor Burns at Portland State encouraged me to join GSOC. What a good idea! I enjoyed the field trips and talks and just meeting interesting and energetic people, plus learning some new geology that I had missed in my frantic two years at PSC. After several years with GSOC, my father's banjo and the world of plants and animals beckoned to me, but I still fondly remember my time with GSOC.