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Hoyt Nealy Acuff, Ph.D. (1925-2015)

ACUFF, DIXON, MCCOLLUM, VER HOEF, MOONEY, CROSSWHITE, BAREIS

Posted By: Mark Christian
Date: 5/23/2015 at 11:20:32

Obituary From Adams Soderstrum Funeral Home, Story County, Iowa.

Hoyt Acuff, Ph.D., 89, of Ames, passed away May 10, 2015 at Heartwood House. No services are planned at this time.

Hoyt Nealy Acuff was born December 2, 1925, the ninth of the eleven children, to James "Pete" and Goldie (Dixon) Acuff in Graydon Springs, Missouri.

In 1949, Dr. Acuff married Mary McCollum and they had three children. After 22 years of marriage, they divorced. In 1973, Dr. Acuff married Mary Ver Hoef, a guidance counselor at Central Junior High School. Hoyt and Mary loved to travel and visited all 50 states and over 20 countries. In one memorable trip, they drove from Ames to Alaska, spending over a month camping. They also took an eight-day raft trip down the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.

Dr. Acuff was a WWII veteran, having enlisted at age 17. He served in the Army Air Corps, as a radar operator in the 20th Air Force, 313 Wing, 9th Bomb Group. He was serving in the South Pacific on Tinian Island and witnessed the plutonium bomb, Fat Man, being loaded into the B-29 "Bockscar" en route to bomb Nagasaki.

After returning to the U.S after WWII, he went to college, first in California, and began what would become a 40-year teaching career, initially teaching agriculture to veterans. Later, after getting his B.A. from Nebraska State College, and his MA from the University of South Dakota, he taught earth science, primarily in junior high school. Dr. Acuff taught earth science in Ames at Central Junior High School for more than 25 years. While in Ames, always focused on education, he enrolled part-time at Iowa State University’s Department of Geology in its PhD program. For his field research for his dissertation, he spent a summer in Kenya working with Richard Leaky, world famous paleontologist, mapping the rock strata on east side of Lake Turkana to enable an accurate dating of the fossils the Leaky crews found. One of the fossil finds of that summer was dated to be 1.55 million years old. He received his PhD from ISU in 1975.

Dr. Acuff is survived by his wife, Mary Ver Hoef Acuff; three children, Katherine Leigh (Edward Hess) Acuff, Denzil Roy (Sharon) Acuff and Hoyt Nealy Acuff, Jr.; five grandchildren, twelve great-grandchildren; two great-great grandchildren; and four of his siblings, Ruth Mooney, Betty Crosswhite, C.L. Acuff and Virginia Bareis.

He was preceded in death by his parents; five sisters; and one brother.

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