Rick Petricek dreamed of becoming an engineer, but almost missed his opportunity. Now he’s helping young engineers seize theirs.

In fall 2019, Callie Lee-Petricek was moving.

Widowed in 2017, she had lost Rick, her husband of almost ten years. The home they had shared in Skiatook together now seemed large and empty without him. Yet, as she began the long and painful process of moving to a smaller place in the city, she realized she had a problem: the doghouse.

It was a big problem. This was no ordinary doghouse, but one built by an OSU engineer. While Snoopy’s doghouse from Peanuts may have doubled as a WWI fighter plane, Rick and Callie's three dogs lived in what could only be described as a spacious canine country lodge, complete with double wall insulation and its own thermostat.

It was a remarkable structure, but it was so big and intricate that only Rick seemed able to take it apart and move it. To this day, Rick’s handiwork is still on display right where every great engineer is bound to end up sooner or later: in the doghouse.

Just add chemistry

Rick was the oldest of two children born in High Hill, Oklahoma, a small community outside of McAlester. His love of the way things worked was clear by the time he was seven years old, when he received his first chemistry set for Christmas. “He was hooked,” his mother Carol Petricek said.

She recalled the hours Rick would spend at the kitchen sink, assembling all manner of concoctions under the watchful supervision of Grandma Jewel. As Rick grew older, his love for math and science became matched by a love for his future alma mater.

Since 9th grade, Rick knew that he wanted to go to Oklahoma State University. But it was this very love for OSU, along with a generous amount of partying and golfing, his mother said, that almost ended his academic career there.

"He flunked out of OSU his first year,” Carol said. ““He did a lot of growing up that semester.”

It would take Rick a lot of hard work and a semester at Eastern Oklahoma State College to get his grades back on track.

Having made it back to OSU, with renewed passion to pursue his dream of becoming a chemical engineer, Rick would ultimately encounter yet another academic setback: organic chemistry.

“It ate his breakfast," Carol said with a laugh. “So he changed his major to civil engineering.”

In the end, civil engineering proved a good fit. The state of Oklahoma, and Rick’s new home of Tulsa in particular, was to become an exciting area for the development of civil engineering projects related to water management throughout the 1980s. Rick went on to receive not only a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering, but also a master’s degree in Environmental Engineering nine years later.

In the years that followed, he worked on city infrastructure projects in McAlester, Skiatook and Tulsa, many of which still stand to this day. Soon, he became a certified and sought-after project engineer and project manager, ultimately joining the notable Oklahoma-based civil engineering firm Poe & Associates, where he spent a distinguished career working on many water and wastewater projects for some of the biggest clients in the state, including his beloved OSU.

Giving where it counts

Rick’s life truly became complete in 2007 when he found love online with Callie, a native of Singapore.

It was no wonder they made such a great match. Despite his small-town beginnings, Rick had grown up with an international outlook, not to mention international eating habits. And Callie was an amazing cook.

With Callie at his side, he would ultimately get in touch with his own origins, visiting the town in the Czech Republic his ancestors had left decades before to immigrate to the US.

Their family wouldn’t have been complete, of course, without the dogs: Kaiser, a black lab, King, a Corgi, and Bear, a German Shepherd and lab mix. Unbeknownst to Callie, Rick drove two hours to rescue and adopt Bear the day before their wedding reception. “He figured it would be easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.” Callie said. “Rick had such a kind heart and soft spot for animals.”

Rick’s passion in helping young scientists stemmed from his involvement with Boy Scouts, which he served in some capacity for 30 years. He joined Boy Scout Troop 404 in sixth grade, progressing through the ranks and earning his Eagle Scout badge at age 17, later earning various Order of the Arrow awards. As an adult, Rick volunteered as the Troop 404 Assistant Scoutmaster, earning various awards at the chapter and district levels. He was nominated and awarded the Silver Beaver Award for making a huge impact in the lives of youth through his hard work, self-sacrifice and years of dedicated service. Yet as Rick found success, he never forgot that it had taken nothing more than a chemistry set to set a small-town boy from Oklahoma on the path to becoming an engineer. Determined to bring similar inspiration to like-minded young Oklahomans, he devoted himself for 20-plus years to volunteering for the Oklahoma chapter of MathCounts, the nationwide mathematics competition for middle school students.

He found an enthusiastic and committed ally in Callie, who spent many years volunteering by Rick’s side as a grader or support staff for MathCounts events. But he didn’t stop there. Rick was constantly drumming up new volunteers, recruiting Rick’s parents, sister, brother-in-law, their friends, their colleagues and even their bosses to lend a hand. Even Callie herself never realized how deep Rick’s involvement with MathCounts truly was until five years after his death, when she received a letter from the Tulsa Engineering Foundation. It said Rick’s leadership made a significant difference in the lives of hundreds of youth and informed Callie that Rick had posthumously been awarded the Tex Richardson Award, which recognizes outstanding achievement and service in engineering and science guidance activities in Oklahoma.

Rick also spent many years volunteering with the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) and the Oklahoma Society of Professional Engineers in various leadership positions. He was named to the 2015 class of Fellows, by the NSPE Board of Directors, in recognition for long term service at the chapter, state and national levels of the Society, as well as to the profession and community.

Seeing the light

In July 2016, Rick began noticing something peculiar about his eyesight. He began losing his left peripheral vision. In September, he saw an optometrist about it, who referred him to an eye doctor. Rick was immediately sent to the neurology department at St John's Hospital.

The findings, as Rick shared in a message to friends and family that weekend, were not good. An MRI had confirmed the presence of a tumor in his brain, and he would be undergoing surgery and removal in a matter of days.

“I don't know what the future holds for me and Callie at this point,” he said. “But I am confident that I will make it through this challenge.”

As it turned out, the situation was far graver than either Rick or Callie could have imagined. They learned Rick’s vision loss was due to glioblastoma, a particularly aggressive cancer that strikes sensitive cells in the brain and nervous system. There is no cure, and for a male patient in his 50s, the best available treatment could only offer a chance of survival no better than 2%.

“I'm not mad at God, I'm not mad at the world,” Rick said. “I've been dealt this, and we will get through it.”

He underwent surgery, chemotherapy and radiation — all to no avail. Within 8 months Rick had entered hospice care. Five weeks later, he was gone.

Living through a legacy

This is where the story of Rick’s efforts to help young scientists ended. Or rather, it would have ended – but Callie refused to let it.

Just as Rick had shared his passion for science with young competitors at MathCounts, Callie yearned to keep Rick’s passion alive in a way that could bring it back to his beloved alma mater, OSU. Yet when she began exploring the possibility of creating a scholarship endowment in Rick’s name, she soon discovered that she had a long road ahead. She started reaching out to family, friends, colleagues, business associates, people Rick had known or volunteered with, asking for help.

“They told me I had five years to raise an endowment,” Callie said. “In the end, we did it in six months.”

As an engineer, Rick had dedicated his life to building things that would outlast him — quite stubbornly so in the case of his doghouse. Thanks to his endowment, he now builds the futures of young engineers like Rose Brady (Forth Worth, Texas), Corina Thompson (Oklahoma City, OK), Andrew Abernathie (Tulsa, OK) and David D’Arcy (Tulsa, OK). Rick’s life may be over, but his legacy is just beginning. And it’s a legacy we can all share by supporting Rick’s endowment. Do what you can, but whatever you do, do it now. Rick and Callie would surely agree, the best way to share your gifts with tomorrow is to start today.

To support the Richard G. Petricek Jr. Endowed Scholarship, visit osugiving.com/petricek.