Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–7
Memphis, and I believe my first memory was probably of the first day, or the first night, we were
in Memphis.
So this is before World War II, probably somewhere in 1939. I was a little kid. They
didn’t know what to do with me. There were very few children in the neighborhood then, and
they put me in a private kindergarten, although I was only three, probably almost four. The
school tried to teach me how to read and write, and they made limited progress. I was just a little
young, but I picked up enough, probably, that maybe a year, a year and a half later, I taught
myself how to read by just reading letters as shapes. Therefore to this day I cannot spell, but
fortunately I know I cannot spell. I read English as if it were hieroglyphics. The words are
shapes, and you can learn to read very quickly. My stepdaughter taught herself to read the same
way when she was about three and never could spell, but she could read very rapidly and she
read very early. So these self-taught readers often are defective in how you deal with words—
how you pronounce and spell them. I think I lasted about a month in kindergarten—I was a
kindergarten dropout.
ASPATURIAN: Speaking of kindergarten, do you recall the attack on Pearl Harbor? You would
have been five.
TOMBRELLO: Oh, yes. That’s an interesting story. We were in Memphis. My father was
running the local variety store for H. L. Green there, although it was still called Silver’s then.
They hadn’t changed all the names. The store was in downtown Memphis on Main Street, I
think—rather a good location, close to the Peabody Hotel, where the ducks used to be led across
the lobby at some time during the day to swim around in the fountain there. My father had a
bunch of very young, interesting assistant managers. I remember the day very well, because it
was a pretty day, clearly in early December, and my family and my father’s staff had gone for a
picnic at Overton Park. Since I was the only child, I had all these interesting young people to
myself. I thought they were wonderful, and they pretended to be very interested in me, and we
had a great day. Winding down afterward, we all gathered back in our living room. I was
playing on the floor. The radio was playing in the background. My parents and the assistant
managers were talking, and my mother said: “Stop. I want to hear what’s happening on the
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T