Gene Alan Goss

Gene Alan Goss, 88, a resident of Edmond, Oklahoma passed away Tuesday, December 8, 2020. He was born in Maud, Oklahoma on January 17, 1932 to Chester and Mary Goss. He graduated from Oklahoma City’s Central High School where he excelled in basketball and track. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in geology from the University of Oklahoma. While at OU he married the love of his life and girlfriend since junior high school, Carolyn Procter. Earlier this year the couple celebrated their 69th wedding anniversary.

After serving as a Lieutenant in the Army, Gene enjoyed a long career as a petroleum geologist starting with Chevron (then Pasotex). He would later go to work for Samedan Oil Company where he remained until setting out as an independent geologist in 1975. He was a longtime member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists and the Oklahoma City Geological Society. He greatly valued the many friendships he made in his business life, and even after retirement loved to visit with old friends and swap stories about their years in the oil patch. Gene was a prolific oil and gas finder and established production from east Texas to northern Alberta and many points in between. Gene mentored many geologists throughout his career and currently within the profession are many who can trace their professional lineage back to Gene either by learning from him or from those he trained.

After his retirement, Gene and Carolyn moved to Hot Springs Village, Arkansas where they spent 21 wonderful years staying busy on the area golf courses and in his gardens and flower beds, and where they enjoyed the close friendships they made there. The couple would eventually move back home to Oklahoma and settle in Edmond to be near family and to establish new friendships in the Touchmark Retirement Community where he lived out his final years. He dearly enjoyed the fellowship of the residents and staff there. During Gene’s final hours, one of his friends from Touchmark’s staff gave him one of the greatest tributes he could ever receive by telling his family that “He taught us how to love.”

He is survived by his wife D. Carolyn Procter Goss; daughter Sandra Cheek and her husband Ken, of San Antonio, Texas; son Chris Goss and his wife Amy, of Austin, Texas; son Mark Goss and his wife Susan, of Edmond, Oklahoma; grandchildren Sara Young and her husband Mike, Samantha Welch, Claudia Goss, and Cole Welch; and great grandchildren Tori Goss, Thomas Young and Charly Young; and sister Mary Reid Warner and her husband Bob, of Hot Springs Village, Arkansas.

According to his wishes, Gene will be honored in a private memorial. The family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Alzheimer’s Association (alz.org).