Charles McFarland Tschanz, known as “Mac,” was born on July 9th , 1926 in the tiny mining town of Mackay, Idaho. He was the son of Otto and Myra McFarland Tschanz in a family of three boys and three girls. Although Methodist, the children’s Christian education was informal because there was no church in the small town. Otto, long time mayor of Mackay, operated a confectionery store in which all the children clerked when they came of age. Myra, a graduate of the University of Oregon, delayed her career as a high school math teacher until after she had raised her family.
Mac, named after his Scotch grandfather, Charles McFarland, always explained that his frugal nature stemmed from both his Swiss and Scotch heritage. His Tschanz grandparents, Anna and Christian, were Swiss emigrants from Canton Berne, a productive agricultural area. They were so frugal that they dried and stored potato peelings in case of a future famine. Nothing was wasted in the Tschanz family!
Mac’s drive, energy, and independence were obvious from an early age. Alone, he climbed 11,682 foot Mount McCaleb while still a boy. Each summer “The Two Boys” Mac and Boyd camped out and rented boats at the Mackay Reservoir. Their worried mother would occasionally drive out with a hot meal to check on them. And at 17 he worked as a forest fire lookout at an isolated tower in the wilderness. He spent another three months as a lookout during a 1947 summer college break.
Despite meager Tschanz earnings during the depression, four of the six children graduated from college. Patricia was an Artist, Emma Jean a Dietician, Boyd a Range Conservationist for the Navaho Nation, and Mac a Geologist. Otto Junior found college boring and dropped out to achieve prominence as Senior Vice President of Garrett Freightlines. Helene and husband Rol Lindburg owned and operated a successful insurance agency in Prosser, Washington.
Mac had graduated from high school in 1943, finishing in three years. But with World War II having started on 7 December 1941, he enlisted in the Navy two days after his 18th birthday. He had already completed one year of college at Idaho State University in Pocatello but always remembered his extreme homesickness and misery when he boarded the ship as one accustomed to small town life in a gregarious family.
In the Navy he was trained as a Signalman Third Class on a ship in the Pacific. However, he saw no action because the war ended before they reached the war zone. He was honorably discharged after serving two years and then pursued a bachelor’s degree in Geological Engineering at the University of Idaho at Moscow from 1946 to 1949.
After graduation, Mac passed the Civil Service exam for the US Geological Survey and began working in the Mineral Deposits branch in Grand Junction, Colorado. He was an assistant geologist on a successful diamond drilling project for uranium-vanadium deposits in Salt Wash sandstone in the Long Park, Club Mesa, Upper Group, and Outlaw Mesa of the Colorado Plateau.
In September of 1950, Mac took leave to attend Stanford University where he received his MS in Geology and was 1 awarded the E. G. Maritine scholarship. While at Stanford, he received the highest grades in the economic geology and petroleum sections of a comprehensive examination given to all graduate students. He studied ore deposits under Dr. Charles F. Park, petrology and petrography under Dr. Aaron C. Waters, and geochemistry under Dr. Konrad K. Krauskopf. His term paper topics were on the geochemistry of barium, the ores of the Bisbee District, and the origin of uranium-vanadium deposits.
In 1951 Mac was assistant to Dr. Park, one of his professors, on the study of Pioche, Nevada’s lead-zinc-manganese ore deposits. In this study, he was the instrument man on a plane table map, assisted with a petrographic study of ores and rocks, and was a co-author of “The Geology and Ore Deposits of the Pioche district, Nevada” by Park, Gemmill, and Tschanz. In six months following December 1952, Mac began doing preliminary work on a reconnaissance geologic map of Lincoln County, Nevada and then also did a geological examination of four mines for the Defense Minerals Exploration Administration loan programs. From July 1953 through May 1954 he worked in Guadalupita, Mora County, and the Coyote Creek District in New Mexico where he was the project chief of exploration for uranium-copper in red beds. Here they discovered significant uranium deposits. He did mapping, exploration by hand trenching, and also supervised two geologists and two laborers. He was the senior author of “The Copper and Uranium Deposits of the Coyote Creek District, Mora County, New Mexico.”
In May of 1954, Mac began working for the Geochemical Prospecting Section of the USGS in the Spanish Peaks region of Colorado. He studied the distribution of minor elements in alkalic igneous rocks, including some rare types that are commercial sources of niobium, beryllium, zirconium, rare earth, and thorium. This work consisted of determining the variation of these elements across several dikes. He also compiled all available chemical, spectrographic, and mineralogical data which he analyzed theoretically to determine the relationship between igneous and ore-forming processes and to exchange reactions between magmas and wall rocks which cause a fractionation of the minor elements.
From 1956 through 1960, Mac worked at Menlo Park in California where he met Virginia Anne Knobel (Ginny), an undergraduate at nearby Stanford University. They had been introduced by a mutual friend who knew that Ginny was from Grand Junction and that Mac had worked there. In addition, they were both of Swiss descent, Ginny’s grandfather having been an immigrant from Betschwanden, Canton Glarus.
After a six week engagement they were married on 17 June 1958 at Ginny’s family home in Grand Junction with all four of their parents present. Mac’s brother Boyd came from Arizona to serve as best man and Ginny’s sister Mary Margaret Colman came from New Mexico to be bridesmaid. Mac was 31 and Ginny was 20 years old, a significant difference but one which resulted in a happy marriage. After a honeymoon to Aspen, Idaho and the Oregon coast, they returned to California where they bought a house at 1241 Lime Drive, Sunnyvale. Some 18 months later Tor Christian was born at the Stanford Hospital. Ginny almost finished her education during this time and received a BA degree in 1963 after petitioning to take the final fifteen units by correspondence from the University of California at Berkeley. She took this opportunity to take electives in Spanish and consequently learned her written grammar very well.
In 1960, Ginny and Mac took a foreign assignment to La Paz Bolivia where Mac was technical advisor in establishing a Bolivian Department of Geology with his counterpart Gustavo Donoso. Mac’s major duties were to plan, implement, and manage mineral surveying projects, as well as to supervise two other geologists in their duties. He was also responsible for approving and disbursing all USAID funds and for arranging the preparation of geological reports for public sale to mining companies.
Mac was essential to the development of gold mining in Alto Beni; he planned and supervised a reconnaissance program that evaluated the major gold placer deposits near the town of Tipuani and disseminated reports of the area that attracted world wide publicity. However, his biggest accomplishment was getting funds from the government to build a road into Tipuani, which previously was accessible only by C-47 cargo planes landing on a dangerous jungle airstrip. In thanks for this, the miners gave him six large gold nuggets and he received a letter of gratitude from the gold cooperatives of Tipuani. Also, the publicity given to the gold region resulted in a loan of $75,000 for a hydroelectric plant.
While in Bolivia, Mac was successful in many of his other ventures. He was commended by USAID mission for an editorial he wrote in the June 1963 Bulletin of the National Mining Chamber on the Department of Geology. He played a “major role in initiating the publication of a new enlarged edition of the principal reference book on Bolivian ore deposits by Dr. Federico Ahlfeld, to stimulate foreign investment”, and was “instrumental” in reopening many zinclead mines containing cadmium. As a result of his long reconnaissance trip to these mines, and ability to focus potential investors’ attention on this region, he gave new employment to about 40 people, and caused the miners to be paid for the cadmium content of their exports. According to John C. Eddison, Mr. Tschanz’s “unusual initiative and forcefulness” contributed much to the National Geological Department, as well as having a “significant” impact “on the Mission’s road priorities to give more attention to the mining sector”.
Mac and Ginny led an active social life with many close friends in the field of mining and geology. There were Swedish, Scotch, Canadian, German, Dutch, Brazilian, and Danish professionals in the mix, along with Bolivian nationals. Political intrigue was constant in a country which had averaged at least one annual coup d’etat since independence. The embassy gave regular warnings to stay at home because of political fighting on the streets but there was only one road out of town which led up to the 13,000 foot Altiplano and the airport. On one memorable occasion the air force actually dropped a few bombs on the barrio of Miraflores while their crowd of friends gathered at their Calacoto house for a marathon bridge game. During the 1960s two more children, Michael Andrew and Laurel Elena, were born in La Paz at the American Clinic. Fortunately there was an Methodist missionary doctor, Bill Jack Marshall, who delivered both babies.
In 1965, Mac accepted an assignment to Barranquilla, Colombia, where he again received much praise as a technical advisor. Mac’s working conditions were miserable and dangerous. The Guajira Peninsula near the border of Venezuela was a notorious area of smugglers and machete wielding desperadoes, avoided even by the Colombian army. Above the Guajira, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta rose to 18,701 feet, being the world’s highest coastal range.
There were no roads, no lodging, no water and no amenities. Mac’s party traveled by jeep and mule, staying in Arawak Indian huts or cinder block ranchero stations. They boiled water from meager streams and dealt with snakes, jaguars and bloodthirsty insects. They either froze on the mountains at night or sweltered under tropical heat during the day. Mac was in the field three weeks of every month and getting back to Barranquilla involved long delays in catching a ferry across the bridgeless Magdalena River. One of his two jeeps was stolen and he was in mortal danger during a three day armed hunt to recover it.
Meanwhile, Ginny was miserable with her lonely life in Barranquilla where the family lived behind iron barred doors and windows. Thievery was constant and the Colombian population, traumatized by La Violencia, were unfriendly, suspicious, and dishonest even in financial dealings with their own families. If that weren’t enough, Colombia was the murder capital of the world.
Despite the harrowing environment, Mac was graded outstanding in all areas, and the rating officer described him as having produced an “extraordinary volume of work under extremely difficult conditions which required greatest supervision and dedication to the work of relatively young and inexperienced personnel, not to mention overcoming a large number of operational problems.” Also the rating officer said Mac was “employing far greater amounts of time and physical efforts than normally expected, …(he)… is to be highly complimented for the effort, organization, and dedication he has put into his work. These qualities, moreover, have been instilled into his counterpart associates such as that they too have profited in these regards.”
Mac was also described as having a great attitude and “unbounded enthusiasm” despite having to work on a project where he was unable to do the in depth mineral evaluation he believed necessary. He was a great leader because of his “demonstrated excellent supervisory ability, employing a nice mixture of humor and seriousness, good tact and diplomacy, such that all around him acknowledge his aggressive leadership abilities and qualities”. Mac was also an easy person to work with as he “constantly maintained the best of relationships and a pleasant camaraderie with his counterparts, such that he is a highly effective officer, particularly in foreign work”. It was here that Mac acquired the affectionate nickname of “Gringo Loco.”
In 1967, Mac and his family moved to Bogota, Colombia where Mac was given office time for writing his report. In an evaluation he was again commended for “demonstrated high technical proficiency and good enthusiasm for his work despite most of the rating year being dedicated to the preparation of a lengthy report on the geology of an extremely complex area, … burdensome to a confined field man. Employee has pursued report preparation despite certain deficiencies in support not under his or our control.”
Bogota, with a climate of perpetual spring, was a welcome relief from the disagreeable Caribbean coast. There were nice restaurants and upscale boutiques. The neighborhoods were clean and the police maintained good order in the upper class barrios. While in Bogota Mac and Ginny were chrismated into the church of St. Alban by Father Franklin, a proper Anglican priest and an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Their good friend from Barranquilla, Father Ed Walker, always stayed with us when he was called to Bogota for conferences with Bishop David Reed.
In 1969, Mac transferred to the Denver Branch of the USGS and the family bought a house at 876 S. Moore Street in Lakewood, across from undeveloped fields and a large lake. The children roamed about with their dog and neighborhood friends, never worrying about dangers which now beset parents.
Mac finished his career doing twelve years of Idaho field work where he studied the Boulder Mountains and wrote the report on the Sawtooth Mountain Wilderness Area. The family joined him when possible and enjoyed the sophisticated pleasures of Ketchum and Sun Valley. Sometimes they stayed in tents, sometimes in trailers, and sometimes in Sun Valley condos. The climate and mores of the United States were welcome changes from the rigors of South America.
However Mac, with his frugal personality, was constantly frustrated by the USGS publication style which required the omission of what the editors considered surplus data, but which Mac considered essential. In 1982, having completed 33 years of service, he was able to retire on an immediate pension.
And it was then that they began traveling in earnest, visiting 35 countries including those they had already visited in South America. Mac spent most of the 1980s as a volunteer, de-facto manager, of the “In Jesus Name Shelter,” which provided 88,000 person-nights of shelter and twice as many meals in the almost nine years of its existence. The Shelter was hosted for about three months at a time by 18 churches of nine denominations in five cities in the Denver area. It was the only homeless shelter for the homeless. This ministry fitted Mac’s personality well, for to him there were no dispensable people. No matter how loony, addicted, mixed-up or depressed, Mac considered all his 5 homeless people to have value and dignity.
During and after the shelter years, Mac’s boundless energy led him into real estate and the purchase of five condos at depressed auction prices during a real estate crash. He rented and managed the units, still dealing with loony people who he had accepted as tenants because he felt their need. In return, they usually gave him a rough time, and he seemed to be continuing his Shelter work on a nonvolunteer basis. He didn’t make much on rent, but did very well on capital appreciation when he sold out.
In November 2006 they moved to Covenant Village in Westminster and on 29 July 2006 Mac suffered a fatal heart attack in the Snowy Mountains of Wyoming. He had just celebrated his 80th birthday and theythey were staying at Dawn’s cabin with Tor’s family. Thankfully, Laurel and Michael were following, came upon the wreck and took Ginny home.
Mac’s funeral, held at Smith Chapel on Thursday, August 3rd, was extremely well attended (perhaps 150 people) with many friends speaking of his goodness, his faith, and his love. The Shelter was mentioned as his major ministry, but also Kairos and his church service as vestryman at three Episcopal churches and junior warden at St. John Chysostom. Fr. Jerry Schnackenberg of the Anglican Mission in America officiated with a funeral mass, assisted by Fr. Patrick Dorn (also AMIA) and Bruce Linsheid (CVC Chaplain). Michael Fowler sang Mac’s favorite hymn “Come Labor On,” which always brought Mac to tears when they were attending St. John Chrysostom in Applewood. My favorite hymn, “The Strife is O’er” was also sung. It is a resurrection hymn sung in a minor key which mixes the emotion of mourning with the joy of Christ’s victory.
Two Navy men presented the American flag to Major Michael Tschanz (in full dress uniform), who then presented it to Ginny. She received some 120 sympathy cards and perhaps a dozen floral arrangements. Mac’s lifelong friend John Cully flew in from Illinois and stayed in a CVC guest room. Neighbors from Lakewood, friends from many churches, family, CVC residents, and board members from the Shelter were all present.
Mac was buried the following day, Friday August 4th, at Fort Logan Cemetery. His three children and seven grandchildren were present along with John Cully and Judy Ford, Mac’s closest Shelter colleague. Michael Fowler read I Thessalonians 4:13, the casket was lowered, and a chapter closed on the remarkable life of “God’s Faithful Servant.”Compiled by Corbette Tschanz and edited by Ginny Tschanz
American Men and Women of Science
Charles M. Tschanz. Education: Univ. Idaho, BS 49; Stanford Univ, MS, 51. Prof exp: Geologist, Colo, US Geol Surv, 49-50, Pioche, Nev, 51-53, chief uraniumcopper proj, N Mex, 53-55, geochem researcher, 55-56, chief mapping proj, Lincoln County, Nev, 56-60, advisor, Bolivian Mineral Resouces, US Opers Mission, USAID. 60-65, geol consult, Nat Mineral Inventory, Colombia, 65-69, proj chief, Boulder Mountains Mapping Proj, 6 Idaho, 69-70, proj chief mineral eval, Sawtooth Nat Recreation Area, Idaho, 71-74, proj chief, Boulder Mountains, Idaho, 74-82. Memberships: Geol Soc Am, Geochem Soc, Soc Econ Geol. Research: Regional mapping and economic evaluation as an integrated project, geochemistry, especially distribution of minor elements in igneous rocks, geology of eastern Nevada, Colorado Plateau, Bolivian Altiplano, and Sierra Nevada of Santa Marta, Colombia.