Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories
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<strong>Tombrello</strong>–256<br />
been in a fraternity. So I drove up to the Bay Area <strong>with</strong> my wife. We’re staying <strong>with</strong> my late<br />
daughter and her husband and their twins. I do something like eighteen interviews in a day. Of<br />
course, I show I have a sense of humor, which I didn’t really have. They would say, “Is there<br />
anything about Bohemia you don’t like?” And I said, “Yeah, there’s one thing. It’s this<br />
affirmative-action policy. As soon as I get in, I want to stop all this letting academics in. I don’t<br />
want to go to the Grove to be around a bunch of academics.” [Laughter] They thought, what a<br />
great sense of humor. And I thought, Ah, I mean it. Although the academics there are<br />
interesting—Stan [Stanley] Prusiner’s there; of course, David Baltimore. At the point I got in,<br />
the only <strong>Caltech</strong> faculty person there was Baltimore, followed then by Elachi. Then, I think,<br />
followed by me—Andy Lange was trying to get in. He killed himself before he did his<br />
interviews, but he had filled out the application for it. They liked him, and I think he would have<br />
liked it there. It would have been good for him. We academics don’t get to vote, because we are<br />
affirmative-action candidates and we pay a little less for some things.<br />
Once you’re in, you’re just a member, and now you start, in the phrase, “sleeping<br />
around.” Sleeping around means people invite you to various camps or you figure out a way to<br />
get invited to various camps. You spend a weekend at the camp and there must be a lot of<br />
discussion behind the scenes of where people belong. I ended up in a camp called Sons of Toil,<br />
which probably has the most academics of any camp at the Grove. They’re interesting people.<br />
There are some entertainers in it, too. The politics run from liberal to so far right it’s around the<br />
curve of the universe. The most conservative human being I know is Walter Williams, an<br />
African American from Washington, who occasionally sits in for some of the real conservatives<br />
on, you know, TV talk shows. He is clearly in a whole class by himself: There is nothing that<br />
can’t be cured by less government. Mike Garrett, who is a friend of mine and who used to be<br />
athletic director at USC [See also Session 3], is there. He’s quiet about politics, but I know<br />
perfectly well he is not <strong>with</strong> his fellow African American, Walter Williams. A previous camp<br />
captain, when he met my wife, they realized they had both done something big. He had been a<br />
brain surgeon who realized that a lot of head injuries occurred because people didn’t have seat<br />
belts in cars, and he found himself a congresswoman and got the seat belt law passed.<br />
ASPATURIAN: And Stephanie, of course—<br />
http://resolver.caltech.edu/<strong>Caltech</strong>OH:OH_<strong>Tombrello</strong>_T