Jarl Johnson didn’t know what he was going to study when he and his twin brother, Earl, graduated from Tulsa’s Central High School in 1948, but he did know he was going to attend The University of Tulsa. He also was clear about three career objectives — to be able to work outdoors, wear clean khakis, and earn at least $500 a month. When a fellow student assured him that a career in petroleum engineering would let him do just that, he needed no further convincing.
One of six children, Jarl grew up during the Great Depression. His father, who had not gone past the third grade, spoke often about the importance of higher education. “He never talked about ‘if you go to college,’ but ‘when you go to college,’” Johnson said during a speech when he was inducted into the College of Engineering and Natural Sciences Hall of Fame (now known as the College of Engineering and Computer Science) in April of 2005. The following month, he was also honored as the Petroleum Engineering Alumnus of the Month.
“Unfortunately,” he added, “we didn’t talk much about ‘how.’”
The brothers took full-time jobs and enrolled in night school. The next fall, having saved some money, they arranged to pay tuition by the month, took part-time jobs, and lived at the home of a pre-med student.
At the time, Jarl’s future wife, Naydene Kelley, was also at TU, graduating with a business degree in 1951. But their romance would have to wait to bloom. Although they had known each other since junior high school, they didn’t become reacquainted until after college.
After Jarl graduated in 1953, he worked briefly for Phillips Petroleum, and then spent 23 years with Kewanee Oil Company, much of that time in Tulsa as manager of engineering. When Kewanee was purchased by Gulf Oil in 1977, Jarl moved to Denver to become vice president of engineering for Hamilton Brothers Oil Company.
In 1980, Jarl was one of the founders of Ensource, Inc., a public company created from some 300 limited partnerships and three mergers. As vice president of operations, he set up the organization to manage 2,700 wells in 16 states. He left Ensource in 1986 and formed PetroJarl Inc., which acquired oil and gas interests that were operated by other companies.
The high point of his career came between 1989 and 1995, when he served as an owner and president of Diamond Energy, a Tulsa company that needed a mere five years to become the fourth-largest crude oil producer in Oklahoma.
Diamond merged into Coda Energy, a Dallas company, where Jarl became vice chairman and chief operating officer. A series of sales and mergers landed him with Westport Resources, from which he retired in the mid-2000s. Additionally, PetroJarl was sold.
The Johnsons also enjoyed a fulfilling family life with four children, including TU alumnus Gary (BS ’79; Petroleum Engineering), Marilyn, Kelley, and Karen.
After retirement, Jarl enjoyed landscaping and working in his wood shop and with his Koi pond. The couple’s post-retirement activities also included delivering Meals on Wheels, and teaching English as a Second Language at Vickery Meadow Learning Center in Dallas — a mission of their church, Preston Hollow Presbyterian. In Tulsa, they helped establish volunteer tutoring programs at Booker T. Washington High School, at Carver Junior High School, and at Celia Clinton Elementary School, as well as several other elementary schools. They also traveled to Alaska, Hawaii, Europe, and Australia.
Jarl served on the Petroleum Industry Advisory Boards at TU and Texas Tech, and he was active with the Society of Petroleum Engineers, which provided funding for scholarships in petroleum engineering at TU.
Jarl and Naydene also gave generously to support TU academics and athletics, and they were recognized as members of TU’s esteemed Circle Society, Chapman Legacy Society, President’s Council, and Golden Hurricane Club.
In 1998, they funded the Jarl and Naydene Johnson Scholarship for Petroleum Engineering at his alma mater. Why do such a thing? Perhaps the answer lies in what he told the audience at his Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “I believe education to be very important to anyone’s life,” he said, and he went on to cite a revelation he had during his early work years at Phillips Petroleum.
As part of his training, he was on a roustabout gang. “I noticed that there were some pretty smart guys in the gang, and that they knew a lot more about the business than I did. After all, that was the reason I was there,” he recalled. “Yet, in a few weeks, I would be moving on to something better, but they wouldn’t. It was because I had the ‘ticket,’ a certificate that said that I had a degree in Petroleum Engineering from The University of Tulsa.
“It was a ticket that would permit me to go where they couldn’t go — a ticket worth far more than it cost and had value greater than the knowledge gained in earning it. It was, you see, an enabling thing. It provided access to opportunities that, without it, would not have been available the rest of my life.”
While as individuals we may not have the capacity to solve the world’s big problems, this “offers us no pardon from taking on some of the smaller ones close at hand. We do not know when the few dollars we can donate to a scholarship fund might represent ‘the last dollar in’ that will enable some student to go to college.”
“We do not know when the information we give, the advice we offer, and the example we set might enable someone to succeed in achieving something beyond his dream of working out of doors in clean khakis for $500 a month.”
“A final thing: To have had a good education, a job that I loved going to, a wife I loved coming home to, children and grandchildren to love and be proud of, good friends along the way, and now this [induction into the Hall of Fame], amounts to a wonderful life.”
Jarl Johnson passed away in December 2019 at the age of 89, having lived a wonderful life and leaving a remarkable legacy. The Jarl and Naydene Johnson Scholarship for Petroleum Engineering will help others achieve their goals for generations to come.
