George Roth

George Helm Roth (April 25, 1911 – October 31, 1997) was an American gymnast and Olympic champion who competed at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. He was a member of the United States men's national artistic gymnastics team and won a gold medal in club swinging, or Indian Clubs as they were often known. He later became a petroleum geologist who in 1954 founded the petroleum consulting company George H. Roth and Associates in Hollywood, California. Managing the company for nearly thirty years, he and his associates helped discover many new California oil fields.

Early life George was a third-generation Californian and the second son of George and Inez Roth. His father was a mining engineer and his mother had a long career as a prospector which influenced his early interest in rocks and minerals and his choice of careers. He graduated from Hollywood High School around 1929, where he excelled in athletics and competed at a high level in Gymnastics. According to an account by his son Jim, Roth dated his wife Beatrice in High School, and married her after graduation around 1930, beginning a long marital relationship. Not long after receiving his gold medal on August 9, 1932, in front of 60,000 spectators, Roth walked out of the Los Angeles stadium and hitchhiked home.

Indian clubs was a sport popular in England at one time, and originally common in England's colonies in India. In Indian club swinging, there is no juggling and the club, which looks like a long bowling pin, never leaves the palm of your hand, making the sport more dependent on muscle and endurance than purely on timing, as the clubs each weigh around a pound and a half. The sport was not performed in the Olympics again after 1932.

Education, 1934-42 George graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors of Science from the University of Southern California in June 1942 while working full-time for Shell Oil and living on West 65th Street in Long Beach. Completing his degree in Geology and Petroleum Engineering, it took him around eight years of attending night school to complete his Bachelors which he began around 1934, as he worked full time during most of his studies at University of Southern California in Los Angeles. In the thirties while studying at USC, Shell eventually promoted him to Chief draftsman. When Shell promoted Roth to Scout/Landsman, around 1942, he was transferred from coastal Long Beach to coastal Ventura, California, a distance of roughly ninety-five miles up the Northern Coast of California, and Roth again relocated his family.

He set up his successful consulting firm George H. Roth and Associates in Hollywood in 1952, meeting the initial challenge of obtaining funding and new clients by working long hours. Other California areas the firm helped discover included the Santa Clara Avenue, Brentwood, Los Medanos, Rice Creek, Livermore, West Edison Deep, Millar Winters, Zamora, and Freeport oil and gas fields. He was survived by his wife Beatrice to whom he was married 67 years, two daughters, a son, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He was affiliated with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Apparently following a three-generation family tradition of mining, George's son would also work as a petroleum engineer.