Terry Lee Chase

George Clay McIntosh Terry was an artist, author, architect, builder, exhibit designer, teacher, preservationist, paleontologist, geologist, well-informed naturalist, collector, and incredibly caring human being. I deeply appreciate that we were able to share more than 50 years of friendship and all too brief time together in the field and museums. I first met Terry in the fall of 1969 at the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology. On first meeting, I was surprised that he knew...

I met Terry in the late 1990s when Chase Studio was hired to create exhibits for the new building and reopening of the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History. At the time we were training our first exhibit docents to be ready when the museum opened to the public. Terry was generous with his time and often led our "trainees" through the exhibits as so they could see them go from design to reality. He agreed to be our keynote speaker for the new museum's first annual volunteer dinner. During...

I was director of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History for 30 years and hired Terry and his firm to design and build some of our major exhibits in the new building. I found Terry to be a highly intelligent, informed, and hard working person who was extremely knowledgable of all things natural history and geology and knew exactly how to build the exhibits that we needed. He had the experience to guide us in moving toward exhibits that far exceeded our initial ideas and were...

I had the privilege of knowing and admiring Terry for three decades, but it was not long enough. Our paths crossed within the museum world and through mutual friends, and somehow whether the interval between visits was short or long, it was always possible to pick up where we had left off, as if we had spoken just yesterday. Whether the visit was at a conference, Chase Studio, my house, or out and about, it was always fun. Terry was a tremendous storyteller, and I will always treasure hearing...