YCGL - October 2, 2022 - Jeff and Sandy

Me, Sandy and Jeff Groom

"You'll never forget your first girl."  -  Advertisement for St. Pauli Girl beer.

"You'll never forget your first graduate student."  Thom Edgar

And Jeff Groom was my first.  We were a great team from the first few weeks of school in 1981 through the next five years.  I was just starting at U of Wyoming as a lecturer then and Jeff was just starting a new opportunity to redeem himself at a new college after experiencing several others beforehand.  He came in as a junior (kind of) and was my advisee.  In addition to the "what can we do to help you become successful" lecture, I strongly encouraged him to join the ASCE student chapter where I was assisting another professor who was the advisor.  I knew it would be good socialization for him (boy, did that work out) and it would give him a broader understanding of civil engineering.  It would also give him some focus for his studies.  

And he became a rock star senior year.  I had become the ASCE Advisor and UW was hosting the regional conference that year.  This is an annual meeting of the 12 ASCE chapters from Colorado, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming.  (New Mexico hadn't joined our conference yet.)  There were something like six major events (A social get-together on Thursday night, Technical and Non-technical paper competitions, a major design challenge, a mystery design challenge, the concrete canoe competitions (which included a design paper and presentation and the races on a lake) in addition to banquets, speakers, arranging hotels, creating forms, organizing judges and awards for all the competitions, etc.  I think we had something like 175-200 students and faculty advisors attend overall.   

This is a huge undertaking and required a separate organizational structure from the normal student chapter officers.  Joe Henderson became the ASCE chapter president that year and Jeff became the Conference Chair.  He took the reins of that pretty unstructured event and made it work.  He organized, set up subcommittees, contacted people, and was a gem when it came to talking to the group.  

The concrete canoe races were the high point of the conference.  The races were scheduled for Saturday morning and the buoys had to be set before the races started.  We had the lake selected and safety officers involved (the Laramie Search and Rescue team), everything was ready to go on the Sunday before the race.  And then Laramie hit.  At 7220 ft, by far the highest school in the conference, we set the nations low temperatures on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.  The lake that was open on Sunday had three inches of ice on it by Friday afternoon.  Searching a 30 mile radius around Laramie, we found one lake that had open water.  Twin Buttes was open because the wind out of the western mountains kept the water churned up enough to not freeze over.  We had waves with breakers.  

At that time, we didn't have provisions in the rules to stop a race because of weather.  The students from all the schools voted to have the race no matter what, so we shifted the start time by about two hours so Search and Rescue could set the buoys, and the race was on.  It was in the lower 20's while they raced.  We used to have a faculty race, but all us advisors decided that it was time to get every back to their hotels to warm up and get ready for the banquet.  

Now, the mad scramble began for us.  This was 1982, and all the scoring was done by hand.  It was time for the awards banquet to begin and we still hadn't finished adding up all the numbers.  Jeff starts the program like he did this in his sleep.  Smooth, funny, calm, introduced the speaker, stalled until we finally got the numbers together to start presenting the awards.  The conference was a total success because of his organization and people skills.  

So, after that, Jeff decided that he wanted to go to graduate school.  But, because of his checkered career before coming to UW, his GPA was a little lacking (.... although it was still better than mine).  I knew that Jeff had skills and abilities beyond his GPA and so I fought for him.  I had to justify his admittance to the department graduate committee, the department head and the dean.  I finally convinced the department head to let him try for a semester and see what he could do.  I remember he had a little over a 3.0, which I argued was good enough.  He did well in his classes (including one from the department head, which helped) and he had a good research project for his thesis.  The project was with the Wyoming Department of Transportation.  Jay Puckett set up an interesting project with a bridge reconstruction on I-80 between Cheyenne and Laramie.  Jay's student worked on the bridge deck design and Jeff worked on geotextile reinforcement in the abutment design.  Jeff did a ton (actually several tons) of full scale gravel testing that  showed the concept Jay and I came up with was viable.  The wild part was using cardboard to support the textile reinforced aggregate behind the abutment wall.  Once construction was completed, we saturated the cardboard to make it collapse and create a gap between the aggregate and the abutment.  This gap allowed the abutment to move a little a prevent stress buildup in the bridge deck.  WYDOT has made it a standard design procedure for bridge design.  Jeff wrote it up, survived his thesis defense, and graduated.  (One day I'll tell the story of  buying a water bed to use for applying a uniform load on the aggregate.  I'll say that the department secretary was very skeptical when I put the order in a water bed and mirrors for the structures lab.)

He got into his career in concrete mix design and has not done a lick of geotechnical design since.  But he's a nice guy anyway.  And, as I fully anticipated, has been very successful in his career.  He was the Denver office manager for the largest material testing firm in Colorado, worked in construction in the South Pacific, and several years ago, came back as a senior vice president for the same testing firm in Denver.  He and a partner teach a short course at the World of Concrete Convention in Las Vegas every year and it is the highest attended course every year.  And now, he is in line to take over the Aggregate short course I've taught for the past 20 years, whenever I decide to end that.  

Sandy is an educator whose career as been working with special needs students.  She is the coordinator for special education for the Gunnison school district.  

They are a great couple.  After living in Guam for several years, they love to scuba dive, hike, fish, and enjoy their families.  I wish they lived closer, (but I wish most of my students lived closer).  For a teacher, your students are your product, that's what you do, and Jeff was one of the best.