Peggy Lou Kirkland

Peggy Lou Kirkland was born two miles from Clovis, New Mexico, on a farm without running water or electricity the day before the stock-market crash of 1929.  In 1936, Peggy’s family moved to the then booming oil town of Eunice, New Mexico, where her father was a tool-dresser on a cable tool rig.  Sometimes Peggy would accompany him onto the floor of the rig, where she watched carefully, and mostly stayed out of the way.  Her character was molded by her father, who was born in a sod hut in the Texas Panhandle, where rabbit was the staple, who with no more than a fifth-grade education eventually went on to become the CEO of an oil and mining company.

The schools in Eunice were excellent, and Peggy was a smart kid who skipped a grade, but in the jump, she somehow missed learning her time-tables. Having grown up in an oil boom, Peggy decided to study geology and she obtained a BS in geology from the University of New Mexico in 1956 and an MS in geology from the same university in 1962.  In 1958 she married Douglas Kirkland, also a geologist.  After several years in Durango, Colorado, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, she and her husband moved to Dallas, where they raised two children, David, an artist, and Brenda, a geologist and a university professor.

In 1974, Peggy began working for Mobil Research and Development Corporation as a paleontologist.  She eventually became Mobil's Technical Training Coordinator, in which position she organized and led field trips in the United States and Canada.  Later, traveling by herself by way of Abu Dhabi, she visited India to see the Taj Mahal, and to Indonesia and Japan to visit friends.  She retired from Mobil in 1991.  In recognition of her contributions to her profession, in 1995 she was, awarded an Honorary Life Membership in the Dallas Geological Society.

She and her husband were married a few months short of 62 years.  Peggy has a daughter-in-law, Michelle, and three grandchildren, Anthony and Billiejean, both in high school, and Maggie George of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Peggy was a talented scientist who left a lasting impact on the field of geology, and was also a gifted artist. She was an advocate of civil rights and gender equality, and spent many hours fighting to make Dallas an integrated and inclusive city. She was a great proponent of education– she volunteered in schools, and enabled her children and grandchildren to seek higher degrees.  Peggy loved to garden and especially to grow irises, day lilies and azaleas, and for several years she volunteered at the Dallas Arboretum.  In the last years of her life she worked diligently on family genealogies and followed politics with a passion.  She was kind and generous and sought and pushed for excellence for and from her family.  Although she fought hard to live on, she will now have lasting rest and peace.

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