John Bethel Petty III

John Bethel Petty III, age 78, died Saturday, July 1, 2017 in Sugar Land Texas after a long battle with cancer. He is survived by his wife Mary Jane Petty, his son Guy Petty and daughter Jane Petty. John was a devoted husband, family man and friend who lived a full and remarkable life.

John was born in Little Rock, Arkansas to John Bethel Petty III and Zena Mae Ashcraft Petty. He grew up in England Arkansas, a small farming community about 25 miles south east of Little Rock. After graduating from England High School, he attended Mississippi State University where he was in the ROTC and graduated with a BS in Chemical Engineering. Having a passion for the sciences and engineering, he continued his education at Louisiana State University and received his MS in Chemical Engineering. It was during his time at LSU while visiting his college buddy in Houston where he met Mary Jane Nabours in the spring of 1962.

In the summer of 1963 and fulfilling his ROTC obligation from Mississippi State, he entered the Army as a First Lieutenant and was stationed at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. On February 8, 1964, John and Mary Jane were married in Port Arthur Texas, her home town. She joined him in Maryland and in January of the following year had their first of two children, Guy. A short 5 months later, John had fulfilled his military commitment, was honorably discharged and relocated to Port Arthur, where they had their second child, Jane. He then began his long career in the oil and gas industry.

Over the next four decades, John’s career would take him and his family to 6 different states ranging from a couple on the east coast when he worked for Texaco in the Chrysler Building in Manhattan to as far west as Colorado, where he started the Waffle House franchise. During his engineering career based here in Houston, he worked in key leadership positions (e.g., Manager, Oil and Gas Operations and Manager of Project Engineering) for several engineering/oil and gas related companies, including John Brown and Kvaerner. The projects he worked on spanned the globe covering many of the countries in the Middle East (he actually lived in Saudi Arabia for 2 years in the mid-80’s when his children were in college), South China Sea, Nigeria, Angola, India, Pakistan, Brazil and several projects that were in the US, such as Wyoming and Pennsylvania. He retired from Kvaerner in 1999 and consulted afterwards on several projects over the next ten years.

In addition to his wife and children, he is survived by his sister, Nancy Sloan and husband Danny Sloan, daughter-in-law Carolyn Petty and his four grandchildren: Taylor, Amanda, Alexander and Emma.

A funeral service will be held July 8, 2017 at 11:00 am at Earthman Southwest Funeral Home - 12555 S. Kirkwood, Stafford, Texas 77477 (281) 240-3300 with a committal service to follow at Forest Park Westheimer Cemetery – 12800 Westheimer Rd, Houston, Texas 77077.

At the request of the family in lieu of flowers, please make any contributions in the name of John B. Petty to one of the following organizations: American Cancer Society (www.cancer.org), Walk with Sally (www.walkwithsally.org) or Make-a-Wish Foundation (www.wish.org).