Interviewer(s): J. Stone. Thibodaux, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Jim Fields grew up with "Little Merrill" Utley and often heard stories about his father's ("Big Merrill") role in the offshore industry in Southern Louisiana. He helped us to set up the interview and participated toward the end. Little Merrill sat in to help jog his father's memory as Big Merrill has been suffering from Alzheimer's for two years. After the interview, Little Merrill told me that his father used to tell him stories that he seems to have since forgotten. I have inserted information from Little Merrill that contradicts what his father said during the interview in brackets.

Merrill Utley, Sr. grew up in Mississippi and joined the Navy after graduating from high school there. He trained as an electronic technician and served on the homefront, mostly in the northeast, during WWII. After the war ended, he studied electrical engineering on the GI Bill first at the University of Mississippi and then at Tulane. Upon graduation, he came to southern Louisiana and started working for Chevron as a radio technician. Throughout his fifteen years with them he gradually started to do more offshore repairs and was instrumental in the designing of the "boat truck" which could back up to rigs to load and unload supplies. He eventually quit Chevron and bought the Delta Well Logging Service, now called Drill Labs/Mud Logging, a company his son Merrill now runs.