Interviewer(s): S. Wiltz. Lafayette, LA

Affiliation: University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Born in 1921, Forrest Sadler grew up in east Texas in the small town of Troup. His father worked in the oilfield firing boilers and would take Forrest to work with him when he was just a child. During high school, he worked summers in the oilfields. After he was discharged from the Navy in 1946, he went to work for Texaco in south Texas. Six years later, he went to work for a service company, Christianson Diamond Products Company, in Henderson, Texas. In 1958, he moved to Shreveport and was made district manager. Four yeas later he was transferred to Lafayette to get the district going. In 1969, he became sales coordinator for the Eastern Hemisphere and moved to London. After spending four years in that position, he was transferred to Singapore where he served as manager of Southeast Asia. He left Christianson in 1975, moved back to Lafayette, and then went to work as the Rocky Mountain manager for Hycalog in Casper, Wyoming; a year later, he was transferred to Singapore. Throughout the interview he remarks on how different the world is today than when he was growing up.