Geraldean Lynn was born January 7, 1926, in Winner, South
Dakota. She was the middle one of three
sisters. When she was six years old, her parents escaping the grasshoppers and
the dust bowl moved the family to Deerfield in the western Black Hills. She
attended a small country school there through the ninth grade. Her family
tradition was that one went on to high school.
She joined her older sister in Rapid City where both attended the high
school. They lived in rented rooms and worked to earn their “keep.” Given the
transportation issues and the late depression economy, they probably only
visited home in Deerfield a few times other than Christmas during the school
year. After her older sister had graduated high school, her younger sister
joined her at the high school to continue the family attendance. Geraldean graduated in 1943.
She obtained an appointment as a teacher in one of the rural
schools. This was the height of World War II with many shortages including teachers;
rural school boards would hire promising high school graduates as teachers. Readers
of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books will recall that Laura went from high school
graduation to a teaching role without further schooling.
In 1944, Geraldean enrolled in South Dakota Mines and began
her college education. She graduated in
1948 with a BS in Physics. She joined the General Electric works in Hanford,
Washington, working on nuclear reactor design and testing. She met there, and in 1952, married Gordon
Fluke who was a World War II veteran and Chemical Engineer by way of Oregon
State University. In 1953, the Flukes joined Boeing Airplane Company in Seattle
where Geraldean conducted analyses and experiments on aerodynamic heating. In 1955 they moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan,
for Gordon’s career and there Geraldean began graduate studies in Nuclear
Physics.
In 1957, she and Gordon joined Aerojet General in Sacramento,
California, Geraldean performed analyses on various aspects of rocketry in the
pioneering Polaris program. She also participated in firing tests and
evaluations of those test results. Her work at Aerojet General was on
classified projects, so she did not have an opportunity to build a publication
record. This was also the situation at both General Electric and Boeing. In
1968, the Flukes moved to Southern California where she accepted a position
with the U.S. Air Force Rocket Propulsion Lab at Edwards Air Force Base.
In 1970, she and Gordon decided that they wanted their two
children to have the experience of growing up in a less frenetic environment
than California. One more like she had experienced in rural South Dakota. They moved to the Black Hills. Geraldean was
offered a position at Edgemont High School teaching mathematics and physics. For
the next dozen years, she gave her students a solid foundation in these
subjects. Many of her students went on to college in various STEM fields as
well as law and education. Quite a few matriculated at South Dakota Mines
including her son Douglas Fluke (ChE 82).
Along the way, while teaching at Edgemont High, Geraldean
sat for the professional engineering examination and was licensed in 1973,
nineteen days after her 47th birthday.
In 1982, the Flukes rejoined Aerojet General in
Sacramento. She began working on a new
generation of solid propellant rockets performing analysis and testing. This again involved many visits to the
testing facilities in Southern California. In 1992, she and Gordon officially
retired moving to Missoula, Montana. Her
retirement was interrupted a year later when she took a temporary assignment in
Rapid City as Technical Coordinator for ECO-Chem Network, an endeavor started
by her son. As she was in Rapid City, she decided to enroll in a Ph.D. program
in Atmospheric, Environmental and Water Resources (AEWR) at South Dakota Mines.
Four years later in 1997, she received the first doctorate in this program. Following this, she accepted a faculty
position teaching mathematics and physics at Aaniih Nakoda College on the Fort
Belknap Reservation in Montana. Geraldean taught there for several years; then
returning to Missoula, she officially and finally retired from her various works.
Of her adult life, she spent ten years as a student, thirty years as an
engineer and nearly twenty years as a teacher.
She was awarded South Dakota Mines’ Guy March Silver Medal
for Professional Accomplishments in 1999. She was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2010.
One has the impression that Geraldean was always engaged in
some activities over and above the official ones. After a four-year gap, she
completed her master’s degree work at the University of Michigan in 1962 while
taking a short leave from her work at Aerojet General. She participated (hands
on) in building their house in Seattle as well as a vacation cabin in Squaw
Valley. She invested in additional “fixer-up” properties, again hands on in the
fixer-up phase. She and Gordan continuously added improvements to their ranch
in the Black Hills. Geraldean received an award from the U.S. Forest Service in
2016 recognizing the Reclamation and Conservation accomplishments on this
ranch. She was a dedicated and
accomplished fisher of trout from childhood. She was also known as a superb
cook. She took up chess as a hobby after
settling in Missoula and became proficient. The only thing she could not do
well was to stay retired.
After a full life, well lived, she died in 2019 at the age
of 93.
Article by Mines alumnus Donn Lobdell (ME 58).