Richard Drake Call died on November 15, 2004, in Tucson, Arizona after a short illness. Richard was born on July 25, 1934, in North Adams, MA to Irving H. Call and Elizabeth Bowman Call, who predeceased him. He is survived by his wife, Susan Meyer Call (whom he married in 1988), son Thomas S. Call (Aimee Greenberg) of Laguna Niguel, CA, daughters Diane Call and Paneen Allen (Baron), all of Tucson, stepsons David Forgey of Tallassee, AL, and Paul Forgey (Melissa) of Thomasville, GA, sister Mary Edmunds of Anchorage, AK, and her four children; his first wife, Irma Call; and five grandchildren: John Whiting-Call, Lily and Avalon Greenberg-Call, and Aidan and Emerson Forgey. Rick was a 1956 graduate of Williams College, Williamstown MA, and received an M.A. in geology from Columbia University in 1960, and his PhD in Geological Engineering from the University of Arizona in 1972. The summer before his senior year he took a bicycle tour of Europe, during which he met Irma Oxley. They were married in December, 1957, and together they raised a family. Following various jobs during his college years involving soils engineering and materials testing, Rick went to work for AMAX in southeastern Missouri, and then he worked as a geological engineer for Kennecott Copper Corporation at Bingham Canyon, Utah. In 1966 he moved to Tucson to finish his graduate studies, and subsequently became an instructor and then assistant professor at the University of Arizona in the Department of Mining and Geological Engineering. He was a vice president and principal at Pincock, Allen & Holt, which he left in 1979 to establish his own firm. Dr. Call was founder and first president of Call and Nicholas, Inc., a geological engineering firm specializing in open pit and underground rock mechanics, located in Tucson which performs work worldwide. The company, which started with five employees, has grown to 25 employees and has a reputation of being one of the premier slope design engineering firms in the world. CNI celebrated its 25th anniversary in October, of which Rick was very proud. He had retired from active management in 1997, but he was still providing occasional consulting services when projects particularly interested him or required his special expertise. He was a leader in the development and use of the probabilistic and the cost-benefit approaches to slope design in the mining industry, and the inventor of the clay imprint orienter. He provided slope designs for over 100 deposits around the globe, including many of the largest open pit mines in the world. In 2002 he was awarded a medal of merit by the Mining Foundation of the Southwest. Since his retirement, Rick continued to travel, usually accompanied by his wife Susan, and even occasionally just for fun. A highlight was a trip to the Bahamas in 1998 with all five children and spouses, and his then two grandchildren. He especially enjoyed making videos of his children and grandchildren as well as the numerous wildlife which occasionally visited his home in Tucson.
Arizona Daily Star, 23 Nov 2004