Dwight Velgene Sukup

Dwight Velgene Sukup, born to Frederick and Helen Sukup on October 17, 1941 in Randolph, Nebraska, passed away peacefully on April 14, 2025 in his hometown of 43 years in Sugar Land, Texas. He is survived by six children: Carolyn, Meredyth, Todd, Lesley, Lauren and Daniel, and ten grandchildren: Frederick, Isabella, Luca, Ethan, Felix, Evan, Alec, Addison, Eliana, and Mateo.

After growing up in Cozad, Nebraska on the family farm, Dwight moved to the biggest city he had ever seen, Denver Colorado, where he went to college, eventually studying mathematics. He went on to earn a PhD of Applied Mathematics from the University of Nebraska. It was there he met his wife of 40 years Marina MacDonnell. He tutored her in math, and liked to joke that she always forgot to pay. Shortly after earning his doctorate, he was drafted to the United States Army’s Air Defense Artillery School with a major deployment to the Panama Canal Zone. Following his service, he joined the Army Reserves, rising to the rank of Major.

After the army, Dwight worked as a mathematics professor at the University of South Dakota in Vermilion, SD. In 1979, He accepted a life-changing opportunity and moved his family to Sugar Land, Texas. Here in Houston, he began a long and productive career as a geophysicist working for Texaco in the Research and Development division. He established himself as a world expert in his field, with several patents related to his work in seismic data collection and modeling. In 2008 he received a Lifetime Achievement award in Geophysics from the Society of Exploration Geophysics.

After his career at Texaco, Dwight established Sukup Geophysical Consulting. During this chapter, he taught geophysics, traveling the world to such far-flung places as Libya, Scotland, Norway, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, and many other countries. This is when the love of sailing took hold of him, embarking on sailing adventures with his children (who were his crew) to such beautiful destinations as the British Virgin Islands, the Sicilian coast in the Mediterranean, the coast of Turkey, and the seas around Thailand. He even faced pirates in Belize. If there was one thing in life, Dwight was always up for adventure!

Throughout the course of his life he also loved golf, almost walking the 18-hole course at the Sweetwater country club daily. He teased occasionally that he was member number 001 with pride. His family would watch him walk out his back door, lugging his golf bag across his back, the clanging and clicking of his cleats following the trail of broken grass to the 14th hold behind his house. He would disappear as the day turned to dusk to arrive home just in time for dinner.

In the last years of his life as things slowed down, Dwight enjoyed a lovely glass of deep red wine. He would watch the stars and planets change through his collection of telescopes and reminisced with his friends and his family, retelling and reliving the adventures he had collected over 80 years. Never a dull moment.