MY FRIEND JIM

THE TRUE MEASURE OF A MAN is how he is thought of, and spoken of, by his peers and Jim Kriegh was universally liked, respected, and admired.

Jim was known as a meteorite hunter of extraordinary skill, but he was also a father and grandfather, an engineer, a university professor, a devoted pet owner, a good neighbor, the founder of the town of Oro Valley, the energy behind the Oro Valley Historical Society, and the sort of thoughtful and loyal friend that few of us are lucky enough to have in their lives.

I met Jim, and his closest friend, Twink Monrad, in 1998. It was shortly after his co-discovery of the Gold Basin strewnfield had been announced. I was living in Hudson County, New Jersey and had just made my first journey to Tucson for the 1998 Gem Show. Jim graciously granted me an interview and my meteorite hunting partner Steve Arnold and myself visited his home in Oro Valley. I was immediately struck by how energetic and enthusiastic Jim was for a man well into his sixties.

"Evidence of Jim’s former career as a University of Arizona civil engineering professor is everywhere: shelves filled with textbooks, articles and scholarly publications. Among them are eclectic meteoritical books by H.H. Nininger and others, and it became plain to me that this clear-eyed and vigorous man had not settled quietly into retirement, but rather had immersed himself in the new occupation of meteorite hunter."

From "The Great Gold Basin Rush"
Meteorite magazine, May 1998

Jim showed us many of his Gold Basin finds and then took us out onto his driveway with a couple of stones and a White's Goldmaster III (his favorite detector). Jim demonstrated how to calibrate that detector so it would "see" Gold Basins, explained exactly how to get to the strewnfield, and put into each of our hands a real Gold Basin meteorite to take with us! Such generosity and such willingness to share "secret" information is more than a little unusual in the meteorite community. A good number of would-be meteorite hunters found their actual own first space rock directly as a result of Jim's generous and sharing nature.

Meteorite magazine published my story: "The Great Gold Basin Rush" in May of 1998, but it wasn't just another interview for me. I really liked those people. The following year, Steve and I were thrilled by a personal invitation to join Jim and Twink at their Gold Basin campsite. It was a superb adventure, and out there in the field I first became acquainted with Suzanne Morrison who would later become a close friend. That trip resulted in one of my best published articles: "The Midas Touch: A Return to Gold Basin," which was more about Jim than Gold Basin. I also snapped my all-time favorite photo of him there — a black-and-white image in which he is holding up a freshly-found Gold Basin, wearing thick gloves, and with those big headphones clamped around his hat. That photo is featured on the Jensan Scientifics poster The World of Meteorites from A to Z.

In 2004 I decided to leave my old life behind, and moved almost 3,000 miles to sunblasted Tucson. I chose a home in the northwest, a little outside of the city limits, partly because the neighborhood appealed to me, but mostly because I would be only a few minutes' drive from Jim and the Monrads. One of the first things Jim did was show up in his battered but indestructible Toyota Tacoma, with a ladder and a bag of tools. We climbed up on my roof, on a hot Sonoran Desert morning, and Jim showed me how to repair a swamp cooler. I'd never encountered one before, but we had it running in no time.

It seemed that every time I went over to Jim’s place he had just repaired the roof of his house, installed a new garage door, done a complete service on his trucks’ engines, or finished putting in some new piping or wiring. He could fix anything and didn’t believe in hiring a handyman to do something when he could do it better himself. Jim was the first person to show me the trick of putting powerful magnets onto my rockpick for fishing meteorites out of the desert sand. He also taught me to keep a spare battery in my 4WD in case the truck failed to start in some scary corner of the boonies. “That spare battery saved me a couple of times,” he once told me. In his own quiet way, Jim was prepared for anything.

He enjoyed the company of friends, but never minded hunting alone. Now and them Jim would call and say, “I just spent two days at Holbrook. I found 17 pieces totaling 31.2 grams,” or some such. He kept meticulous records of every trip and every find. He loved Holbrook and had an uncanny ability to spot tiny little stones hiding among the orange sand dunes.

I was barely settled in Tucson when Jim told me about some meteorite hunters he wanted me to meet. They were cautious about disclosing a new find, but Jim assured them I was discrete, and asked if he could bring me along. He felt there was a good article in it. And so, thanks to Jim, all on one amazing day, I met Ruben Garcia, Sonny Clary, and Mike Miller: three superb hunters who would become trusted friends and future expedition partners. Jim's idea of a trip to Franconia generated my favorite published piece:

"As always, Jim is a model of efficiency. I’m hooking up my Gold Bug metal detector, and checking my Camelback, gloves, hiking boots, gators, magnets, rock pick, baggies, fedora, sunscreen and sunglasses, and trying to make them all work together, somehow, in some kind of harmonious fashion. But the mouthpiece on my Camelback keeps getting tangled up with the detector cable. While dealing with that I’m vaguely aware of a subtle humming as Jim ground balances his Goldmaster. He’s all kitted up and ready to go, and although eager to begin the hunt he is also too gentlemanly to rush me. 'Don’t wait for me, Jim. I still have to check the cameras. I’ll catch up with you.'"

A few minutes pass, and I’m thinking to myself: While I’m getting all this gear together, I just know Jim is going to go out, find a meteorite right away, then come back here and say ‘I’ve already found one,’ and I’ll still be organizing my gear.'

'I’ve already found one!' I hear Jim shout out from west of the gulch. At most it’s been two or three minutes. His first catch of the day is a small, moderately weathered black chondrite. It had been slightly buried in the sandy flats north of Interstate 40 and jumps happily onto the magnet attached to Jim’s rock pick. I am reminded once again how skillful my friend is with a detector."

From “Lingua Franconia: Deciphering Arizona’s Meteorite Graveyard”
Meteorite magazine August, 2004

There were many other adventures and many great memories, but I'll always think of Jim in his blue plaid shirt and gray tweed hat, walking around the InnSuites during the Tucson Gem Show with his notebook, stopping every few minutes to shake hands with one of his many friends, and eventually returning to the search for an obscure classification to add to his meteorite collection.

There will be no filling of the place that Jim has left behind. But he was one of those few people who leaves the world in better shape than he found it. One of the finest men I ever knew.

Geoffrey Notkin
Tucson, Arizona
October 11, 2007