Joseph "Joe" Neal Hurlbut

Joseph Neal Hurlbut was born on August 30, 1934, in Houston, Texas. He spent much of his childhood in Beaumont and the bayou country of East Texas with his father C.D. Hurlbut Sr., mother Lottie “Jack” Hurlbut, and older brother C.D. Hurlbut Jr.

In his senior year at Aldine High School in North Houston Joe was voted “most likely to succeed.” Outside of school, Joe played trombone in a local dance band with his big brother and often performed in venues where, strictly speaking, he was too young to be admitted. (Proprietors were willing to look the other way as long as he paid his $5 music union fee and didn’t drink any alcohol.) One of his favorite big band tunes was “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” by Glenn Miller, which later he’d play in the basement for his children.

Joe joined the U.S. Army in 1954. After completing basic training, he was assigned to a special division testing a new generation of guided missiles at Fort Bliss outside of El Paso, Texas. Before deploying, he visited his father at his office in downtown Houston. There he noticed a pretty 19-year-old girl who was delivering mail—Lena Ruth Miles, who had moved to Houston after graduating high school. Joe gave her a whistle as she walked by, and with additional encouragement from his father, he and “Miss Miles” were soon exchanging several letters per week. For his first Easter holiday furlough, Joe and an Army buddy made a break-neck 800-mile non-stop drive from El Paso to Houston. Joe proposed to Lena, and the two were married on July 2, 1955, beginning a rich life partnership spanning nearly 64 years and thousands of miles.

Their first child, David, was born in 1956 while they were in Houston. Three years later the family left the warm Texas Gulf Coast and moved to the rugged Danforth Hills of northwest Colorado, where Joe began a long career with Texaco, Inc. as a petroleum engineer. Texaco transferred the family around the oil patches of western Colorado several times, but both of their next children were born in Craig: Michael in 1961 and Daniel in 1963.

Joe’s talent as an engineer was balanced by his down-home people skills. He rose to regional management positions in Texaco for oil field production and safety, working out of Casper (Wyoming), Midland (Texas), and the Denver area. Joe and Lena moved to Littleton, Colorado in 1989—the last move they would make for the company. By the time he retired from Texaco in 1994, Joe was the patriarch of an extending family. Sons Michael and Daniel raised families of their own in the Denver Metro area, and in 2007 David moved with his family from Austin, Texas to Golden, Colorado. Joe and Lena cheered the grandchildren on in school activities and provided a second home when the parents were busy.

Joe and Lena spent much of their retirement prospecting for jade and petrified wood in the Shirley Basin and other parts of central Wyoming, a recreation they started while living in Casper. They also traveled with friends to many Western Hemisphere destinations, and enjoyed exploring old mining towns in Colorado. Joe regularly bowled in city leagues and tournaments with his son Dan and grandson Devin.

Joe was hospitalized on January 19, 2023, for pneumonia and moved to home hospice care on March 2. He passed peacefully the evening of June 10, in the company of his sons and their families. He was preceded in death by Lena on May 24, 2019. Joe is survived by his sons David Joseph Hurlbut, Michael Neal Hurlbut, and Daniel Bryan Hurlbut and their wives Ruth Rayne Rinehart, Cynthia Bower Hurlbut, and Rebecca Dymond Hurlbut; grandchildren Lindsey Hurlbut Bopp and her husband Brian Bopp, Zachary David Hurlbut and his wife Dustie Hurlbut, Devin Neel Hurlbut, Emily Ruth Hurlbut, Brandon Jackson Hurlbut, and Amelia Rose Hurlbut and her husband Angel Caro Sevilla; and step-granddaughter Lora Rayne Rinehart.