Gene Sinex

Gene O. Sinex was born Dec. 13, 1917, in Oklahoma City, the youngest of three boys of James A. Sinex and Willa Mae Miller Sinex. He passed Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015, at The Lutheran Home in Cape Girardeau.

Gene and his brothers grew up in an area of Oklahoma City known as the Miller Community divided by Miller Boulevard.

Gene Sinex met his first wife, Betty Faye Carter, at Classen High School in Oklahoma City. He graduated from Oklahoma University with a degree in mechanical engineering in May 1939, and he and Betty were married Nov. 23, 1939. They had three children, twin sons, Donald and Kent, and a daughter, Nancy.

At the time he was in college, all men attending the university were required to take Reserve Officer Training (ROTC). This also required him to join the U.S. Army for one year of reserve officer training, which he completed in July 1941, just before Pearl Harbor was attacked Dec. 7, 1941. He was sent to Hawaii to join the 25th Division as a forward observation artillery officer.

While being transported from Hawaii to its assigned mission, the 25th Division was diverted to Guadalcanal, where it landed and fought the Battle of Guadalcanal. From there he continued with the 25th Division in the Battle of New Georgia. He returned home in early 1944 and applied for flight training. After completing training, he was assigned to the VII Army Corps, 3rd Division, in Europe as a forward observation liaison pilot. He returned home at the end of World War II in May 1945.

He always loved flying, and after the war, he continued flying his small plane in National Guard air shows and became a flight instructor in the National Guard, as well as for private pilots. He retired from the National Guard in 1959 as a lieutenant colonel but continued private flying and instruction on the weekends.

Flying was not his profession, however. In Oklahoma City, he worked for an oil-field construction company -- B, S, and B -- selling and building crude-oil storage and natural-gas production equipment. In 1952, he joined with a colleague from B, S, and B and moved to Farmington, New Mexico, to help build American Tank and Steel Corp. It was there he acquired 12 patents in the area of gas processing and dehydration, which still are being used to this day to teach fluid mechanics in several engineering schools in Oklahoma and Texas. After leaving American Tank, he moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and became president of Crest Engineering, a consulting and design engineering firm for the oil industry, with offices as far away as Tehran, Iran. Crest was acquired by Combustion Engineering and thereafter was called C.E. Crest Engineering. During this period, he served on the board of directors of Combustion Engineering. From there he continued as a worldwide engineering consultant for design and construction of onshore and offshore production facilities, including the Esso Libya gasification plant in Marsa El Brega, Libya, and the B.P. Forties North Sea Production Platform, as well as a consultant for design and construction for the Chinese government in Beijing.

He was a member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist. He was also master of the Farmington (New Mexico) Masonic Lodge and a 32nd-degree Mason.

Betty Faye died in 1984, and it was then he moved to China, where he met Laura Shy, an English teacher at Beijing Normal University. After returning to the U.S. in 1986, he and Laura were married and have lived in retirement in Farmington; Vallecito, Colorado, near Durango; Springdale, Arkansas; and Cape Girardeau. Laura has been his loving wife for all these years, and she remains a loved member of the Sinex family.

Survivors include his wife, Laura, of Cape Girardeau; a son, Don (Bitsy) Sinex of Houston; a daughter, Nancy (Brad Jr.) Sinex of Colleysville, Texas; a daughter-in-law, Patricia Sinex of Durango, Colorado; six grandchildren; 15 great-grandchildren; and a great-great-grandchild.

He was preceded in death by his first wife, Betty Faye; a son, Kent Sinex; his parents; and two brothers.

Visitation will be at Hood Mortuary in Durango.

There will be a service at the cemetery, weather permitting. He will be interred at Greenmount Cemetery in Durango.

Online condolences may be made at www.fordandsonsfuneralhome.com.

Arrangements were made by Ford and Sons Funeral Home.