Dates

• Existence: 1916-

Biography

Lois Regina Wescott, geologist and genealogist, was born in 1916 to Roy and Geneva Moolick Wescott in Hampton, Iowa. Wescott had two older siblings, Gwendolyn and Verne, and a younger brother Eugene born when she was fifteen. Within a year of Eugene's birth, Wescott's father died.

Lois Wescott completed high school and taught at a school near Hampton for several years before enrolling at the University of Iowa. Wescott, who spent so much time examining rocks that her friends nicknamed her "Rocky," pursued a degree in geology. She was the only woman to receive a degree in geology in 1941. Following graduation, Wescott received a full scholarship to the University of Denver for graduate study. When her advisor, Dr. Margaret Boos, left the university to assist with the war effort, Wescott determined that it would be too difficult to complete her master's degree. She secured a job with Atlantic Refining Company in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and worked for oil companies in Caracas, Venezuela, and New Orleans before her daughter, Thyria Kathleen Wilson, was born in 1952.

Following her daughter's birth, Wescott could no longer find employment in the United States, so she worked in Japan as a geologic editor from 1952 to 1954. She returned to the United States and edited a journal for the School of the Mines in Golden, Colorado, from 1955 to 1956. She obtained a position as an atmospheric science technician at the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Agency in 1957 and remained there until she retired in 1980.

Once retired, Wescott moved to Canyon Pointe senior housing in Boulder, Colorado, where she edited the Canyon Pointe Chronicle monthly newsletter. She also became involved in genealogy and wrote a number of family histories.

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