Friday, March 20, 2020
Greetings to the Stephens family and his kin,
I had the pleasure of meeting Dan at work this past spring when I was a new hire to the company and I was assigned to process many of his team's incoming documents and drawings. I will share this one particular memory I have of him. When he had been receiving hundreds of these said documents and drawings from me, after some weeks had passed that I got the assignment, he and I ran into each other as I was returning to my desk and we had a good laugh at "Well who is this new guy giving me all this work to get done! You the Sam that is sending me all this?!?" I replied yes Sir! Dan then noticed that I had an old "brain bucket" at my desk i.e. a hard hat for those that have never done any oil field patch work or any other type of operations work. Dan noticed that my hard hat had many dings and scratches and paint all over it. He said," I got one of them too Sam." We then shared our past as younger men when we both had jobs not in the A/C but out in the Sun. I asked him about his journey from ops man to getting an Engineering degree, something that I always find impressive for any man or woman to accomplish in life, to be a day labor type of worker to then go on and attain a degree of such requirements and dedication. I told Dan, "They just don't hand those degrees out to men like us Dan! Haha!" He and I had a good laugh and he asked the same about me, how did I end up from roughneck to database management, and thus I told him my back story from ops kid at 19 to putting myself through college and leaving the oil rig life and all its joys and pains behind! We had a better laugh! It was then and there I knew I had a new friend in life. Dan specifically told me that I had been doing a good job in his eyes with all the work arriving our way. I want to say that Dan Stephens was what I like to call "Salt of the Earth" type of a man. Sharp, direct, hardworking and humble. I only knew Dan for a short time but he sure made an impression on me. I can only imagine how much of a tremendous father and grandfather he must have been to his kids and grandkids! May God bless y’alls family!
Rest in Peace Dan, as we all used to say out in the field, "ALL GO! - NO QUIT!!!"
Sincerely,
Samuel A. Whitehill
