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COLP -- John L. Colp, Ph.D. left this earth, February 23, 2010, to join his beloved Martha, who predeceased him by five months. John and Martha were married for 68 years and had three loving daughters who survive them. Carol Brown and her life-partner, Bernagene Shay, of Rio Rancho, NM; Susan Rhoden and her husband Michael, of Possum Kingdom Lake, TX; and Jan Pendery and her husband Mike of Frisco, TX. Also surviving John are his sister-in-law; three nieces; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. John was born July 16, 1920 in Carterville, IL and received his bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at University of Illinois, Urbana and married Martha Wiswell in 1942. He and Martha then moved to Los Angeles, CA where he worked as an Aircraft Design Engineer at Douglas Aircraft Company until World War II ended. They had their first daughter while in Los Angeles. In the fall of 1945 they returned to Carterville, where John opened his own construction business. It was here that Martha gave birth to their second daughter. In 1948, they moved to Indianapolis, IN where John worked for General Motors, Allison Division as an Experimental Engineer on Military Tank Transmissions. It was here that they had their third daughter. In 1953 the family of five moved to Holden, MA where John went to work for a corrugated container manufacturer as Plant Chief Engineer during extensive new construction and plant layout modernization. John moved his family to Albuquerque, NM in 1955 to join Sandia National Laboratory as a member of the Technical Staff. At Sandia, John was on a committee to study the compatibility of a weapons systems being flown by a nuclear powered aircraft. This was studied to see how they could shield the people and also the electronics from the radiation. Shortly after that, John was the principle engineer in charge of designing the building to house the very first 5 megawatt Sandia Engineering Nuclear Reactor. He had to configure the building to be able to house the reactor and have the radiation slowly leak from the reactor into a large holder for waste. When that project was put out for bid, the lowest bidder's bid was 3.2 million. (Thanks to Bill Snyder for his help with this early part of my dad's career). Dad also told us that at some point, he worked on how high to drop fake palm trees outfitted with listening devices so that they would stand up straight and look like a palm tree. This research was then used during the Viet Nam War to drop fake palm trees along the Ho Chi Minh trail so that we could hear what the North Vietnamese were saying. In 1966, he earned his Masters degree in Civil Engineering at the University of New Mexico. In 1969-1972, while on leave from Sandia Corp., John earned his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at Texas A&M University and he was a loyal "AGGIE" from then on. Once he had his Civil Engineering degrees, his focus turned to volcanology. He was at Mt. St. Helens in 1980 as soon as it was deemed safe to study and he and mom traveled frequently to Hawaii to study core samples from the active volcanoes there. He retired from Sandia on January 1, 1983 and he and Martha moved to Deming, NM in August, 1995. They used Deming as a home base but traveled extensively in their ever-present travel trailer. In May, 2001, John and Martha moved in with their middle daughter, Susan and her husband Mike at Possum Kingdom Lake. They both used to say that they lived in the prettiest spot in the world. They could look out their front window and see deer, all kinds of birds (which John loved feeding) and lots of ducks, coots and herons flying and fishing around the lake. Should friends desire, memorial contributions may be made to The Carterville Schools Foundation, 306 Virginia Avenue, Carterville, IL 62918.
        Published on: Sun February 28, 2010