Gene Sinex Obituary

Gene O. Sinex was born in Oklahoma City on December 13, 1917, the youngest of three boys of James A. Sinex and Willa Mae Miller Sinex. He passed on at his residence in Cape Girardeau, MO on November 18, 2015. Gene and his brothers grew up in an area of Oklahoma City known as the Miller Community divided by Miller Blvd.

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 of 1939 and they were married November 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 of 1941 just before Pearl Harbor was attacked December 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 they 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 WWII in May of 1945.

He always loved flying and after the war, 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 Lt. Colonel but continued private flying and instruction on the weekends.

Flying was not his profession, however. In Oklahoma City he worked for a an oil field construction company, B, S, & B, selling and building crude oil storage and natural gas production equipment. In 1952, he joined with a colleague from B, S, & B and moved to Farmington, NM to help build American Tank and Steel Corp. It was there that he acquired twelve patents in the area of gas processing and dehydration, which are still 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 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 was thereafter 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, China.

He was a member of the First Church of Christ Scientist. He was also Master of the Farmington Masonic Lodge and a 32 degree Mason.

Betty Faye died in 1984 and it was then that he moved to China where he met Laura Shy, an English teacher at Beijing Normal University. After returning to the US in 1986, he and Laura were married and have lived in retirement in Farmington, New Mexico.; Vallecito, Colorado, near Durango; Springdale, Arkansas; and Cape Girardeau, Missouri. 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 Sinex (Bitsy) of Houston, TX; a daughter, Nancy Sinex (Brad, Jr.) of Colleysville, TX; a daughter-in-law, Patricia Sinex of Durango, CO; six grandchildren, fifteen great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.

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

A funeral service will be held at Hood Mortuary in Durango, CO on Monday, November 23 at 10:00 a.m. followed by an interment at Greenmount Cemetery.