Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–254
TOMBRELLO: Oh! That’s an interesting little vignette. Summer of 2006; we’re in Kauai. Bill
Davidow is one of our neighbors there—he’s a Caltech trustee. We got to know one another
because we met him at the event at the Mauna Kea hotel in 2000 where I laid my trap for Gordon
Moore. So anyway, Bill and Sonja Davidow and I knew one another; and Bill kept saying
there’s this wonderful place, Bohemian Grove. Well, the only thing I knew about Bohemian
Grove is something I had read from—oh, the woman who wrote Slouching Towards Bethlehem?
ASPATURIAN: Joan Didion?
TOMBRELLO: Joan Didion. I love her writing. I love her writing! In one of her books, she’d
thrown in this description about the Bohemian Club. So, I knew about it from that.
ASPATURIAN: Is this the place where the guys used to dress up in drag?
TOMBRELLO: Well, I’ll tell you a little bit about Bohemian.
ASPATURIAN: I just want to see if we’re on the same page here.
TOMBRELLO: It is a men’s club. It has a city club in San Francisco. It has a redwood grove up
near Santa Rosa, near Monte Rio, California. Inside the Grove, there are a bunch of little
camps—you know, typically maybe twenty people in each. The membership total may be a few
thousand. Politically incorrect; women aren’t allowed. It tends to be mostly—you would say—
conservative. The reputation it has is that its members are a bunch of the powers behind the
scenes who run the nation—you know, Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, George H. W. Bush.
So anyway, Davidow gets this idea that I should go to the Grove, summer of 2006, as his guest.
Stephanie says, “You don’t seem to want to go.” I said, “Boy Scout camp. I never liked camp.”
She says, “You’re going.” I said, “Yeah. Bill’s a great friend. For Bill, I’ll just do it and grit my
teeth.” I said, “I’m not going to take swimming lessons.” [Laughter]
The other person who is pushing on me is [Victor] Tory Atkins; he was another Caltech
trustee [d.2007]. I also met him for the first time at the 2000 Mauna Kea thing. He was a very
young submarine commander out in the South Pacific and had a Silver Star for this—I didn’t
know that until recently. Tory didn’t talk about any of that, didn’t mention that he’d been in the
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