John Woncik’s father, Daniel, emigrated from the Carpathian Mountains of the Austria-Hungarian Empire and arrived in America in October 1909 at the age of 20 to start a new life. After five years of working in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, he married Teklia “Tillie” Zubik, who had emigrated from the same village a few years after Daniel. In 1916, the young couple moved to Watervliet, New York, a small community north of Albany, where Daniel began a 37-year career as a foundry sand molder. Daniel and Tillie had six children – five boys and a girl. John Woncik was born in 1925, one year after Daniel had become an American citizen.
John Woncik was a standout at Watervliet High School and graduated as the class valedictorian in 1943, in the midst of World War II. He enlisted in the U. S. Naval Reserve and attended the V-12 Officer Candidate Schools at Dartmouth College and Cornell University. He was commissioned as an ensign and served as an assistant gunnery officer aboard the destroyer USS Stevens in the Southwest Pacific. He earned two battle stars for action in the Philippines and Borneo.
After the war, John decided to take advantage of the GI Bill and enrolled at The University of Tulsa. He graduated from TU with a Bachelor of Science degree in Geology in the spring of 1950. During his time at TU, he met fellow geology student Donald L. “Don” Hansen, and they became good friends. Since jobs were scarce at the time of their graduation, the two made plans to go the University of Minnesota to earn their master’s degrees. Before leaving Tulsa, John married another TU student, Shirley Yates. At the University of Minnesota, John completed both his coursework and thesis in less than a year, which was a record time for the school at that time.
After earning his graduate degree, John and Shirley moved back to Tulsa where he found employment as an exploration geologist in the petroleum industry. John worked for Apache Corporation developing oil and gas drilling prospects throughout Oklahoma and was later promoted to explore in frontier areas outside of the state. In 1967, on John’s recommendation, Apache drilled the #1 US Fagerness well and discovered the prolific Recluse oil field in the Powder River basin of Wyoming. While at Apache, John also urged the company to hire his close friend from TU, Don Hansen.
In 1971, John left Apache to become an Independent Exploration Geologist, prospecting from the Arkoma Basin in Oklahoma to the North Slope of Alaska. He traveled widely and published several academic papers. He was a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the Tulsa Geological Society, the Rocky Mountain Geological Society, and The Explorers Club in New York City.
John’s successful career enabled him to support The University of Tulsa in both academics and athletics. At his 40th alumni reunion, John was asked what TU had meant to him. He answered that TU had given him a good life because of three things: It had given him a career that he enjoyed; a good hometown in which to raise his family; and it had given him a wife with whom he could share his life.
John died in a drowning accident at age 61 in December 1986. Two months later, Don Hansen began raising donations to fund a scholarship in John’s memory to provide financial support for students interested in pursuing a Geology degree at The University of Tulsa. Mr. Hansen spent a year raising contributions from John’s colleagues in the oil industry and from members of the Woncik family.
His success led to the establishment of the John Woncik Memorial Scholarship for Geosciences. The University of Tulsa community is sincerely grateful for this heartfelt tribute to a loyal alumnus whose love of his profession is remembered with each John Woncik Scholar.
