Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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Tombrello–12 done very well at that—as well as he had done at the mines. He was the only uncle whose mine didn’t get unionized by the United Mine Workers, and nobody quite knows how and nobody ever asked. I’d always jokingly say, “It’s hard to find a union organizer if he’s under a thousand tons of rock.” [Laughter] I don’t know that anything like that happened. But for some reason Uncle Joe never got unionized and always made a lot of money. My Uncle Sam got unionized immediately, because he always met union activity head-on with “Nobody is going to unionize my mines.” John L. Lewis got him very easily. ASPATURIAN: John L. Lewis was quite a force of nature. TOMBRELLO: Absolutely. But my Uncle Sam figured, “You know, the price of coal is dropping. I could make this more efficient. I can use better technology. I can make money at $5 a ton.” The answer is, All you can do is lose a lot of money at $5 a ton. And he did. I had one uncle who had been in the war. Well, he’d been a quartermaster. Well, no. He had been a kind of gofer for a colonel or maybe a general—a fixer. Uncle Frank. He had one eye—another childhood-accident case, like my father. They each had lost an eye in a childhood accident. Uncle Frank was showing off for this teenage girl he had married—my Aunt Isabel— and he enlisted! He spent the war finding cases of Scotch and that kind of thing for his colonel or general. But then he comes back, and the coal thing is over. He hasn’t started any new businesses, and so he flails around for a couple of years, trying to raise peanuts, trying to do a variety of things. None of them work. Then he looked around at the rights-of-way under power lines—you know, the land under them, which has clearly been bought or leased—and he realized that a lot of stuff had grown up there during the war and that it hadn’t been cleared. He hired a bunch of unemployed teenagers who previously would have worked in the mines. And so with primitive tools—hand tools—they went out and took contracts to clear the rights-of-way. Brilliant, opportunistic business. As he made money, he began to invest in equipment. Eventually, he took on other projects, like roads and dams and that sort of thing. Very successful at business, and it all started from a bunch of kids out there with bush hooks, killing rattlesnakes and chopping down trees and hauling them off. It was an interesting story. I still see one of my first cousins, who is about the age of my oldest child. She was on the punk-rock circuit—she’s an interesting lady, too—and we talk about Uncle Frank. He was http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
Tombrello–13 truly bigger than life. After the book The Godfather came out, my father used to kid Frank about being the godfather. After he read the book, I believe Uncle Frank took on some of its characteristics. He dressed in a more flamboyant style. I think he was no more into illegal things than other people in the construction business, which is a business known for buying influence and figuring out ways to get contracts that maybe one shouldn’t look at too closely. But I don’t think he was any different than other people in that business. You think of Kellogg Brown & Root or perhaps the Bechtel Corporation and some of the things they did on a bigger scale. To bring in Lyndon Johnson again, in Texas we used to call him “the senator from Brown & Root.” I think the construction business exists because you can get state and government contracts. If people in the business play fast and loose with that, I think that’s part of trade. We all enjoyed the continuing story of that when we were watching what was happening in Iraq with Kellogg Brown & Root. Well, by 1947, we had had one year in Birmingham, and my father got an offer to come back to the H. L. Green Company. He could either have taken the store in Hempstead, Long Island, or the store in Fort Worth, and going back to Texas was obviously a high priority. The Fort Worth store was not finished. While it was being built, he was doing his ordering out of the Dallas store, which was thirty miles away. So we lived in Fort Worth, but Dad was commuting to Dallas. Then somebody died in the company and everybody moved up a notch. My father got the Dallas store, which was the biggest store in the company, and we moved to Dallas. At that point, I was in the sixth grade, discovering that the schools in Dallas were not as good as the schools in Fort Worth, where they were really excellent, or I thought so anyway. For once in my life, in Fort Worth, I actually enjoyed school—for three months. ASPATURIAN: I have a question. It sounds like you spent most of your youth in the South at a time when it was still segregated. Did this affect your life at all? Was there much awareness of it? TOMBRELLO: Oh, there was awareness. Everything was segregated. Separate drinking fountains, all that sort of thing. I was a typical Southern kid, who because he didn’t know anything else believed in segregation, though it was tempered by the fact that my father ran a variety store, and I would say it was heavily, heavily dependent on the African American http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Tombrello_T
Page 1 and 2: THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO (b. 1936) INTER
Page 3 and 4: Contact information Archives, Calif
Page 5 and 6: NOTE TO READERS Per agreement betwe
Page 7 and 8: Tombrello-iv TABLE OF CONTENTS INTE
Page 9 and 10: Tombrello-vi Session 4 68-72 Colleg
Page 11 and 12: Tombrello-viii his presidency. Tomb
Page 13 and 14: Tombrello-x 206-213 Establishes (wi
Page 15 and 16: CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Page 17 and 18: Tombrello-3 TOMBRELLO: Bisacquino.
Page 19 and 20: Tombrello-5 TOMBRELLO: This proceed
Page 21 and 22: Tombrello-7 Memphis, and I believe
Page 23 and 24: Tombrello-9 otherwise, we mostly we
Page 25: Tombrello-11 of the ability of the
Page 29 and 30: Tombrello-15 I associated with the
Page 31 and 32: Tombrello-17 they’re probably rig
Page 33 and 34: Tombrello-19 ASPATURIAN: Your thesi
Page 35 and 36: Tombrello-21 wonderful time. And yo
Page 37 and 38: Tombrello-23 TOMBRELLO: Let me go o
Page 39 and 40: Tombrello-25 ASPATURIAN: When you s
Page 41 and 42: Tombrello-27 We did that again in t
Page 43 and 44: Tombrello-29 funding our research t
Page 45 and 46: Tombrello-31 from the NSF grant, bu
Page 47 and 48: Tombrello-33 doing great stuff, bec
Page 49 and 50: Tombrello-35 TOMBRELLO: I wasn’t
Page 51 and 52: Tombrello-37 [Morrisroe Professor o
Page 53 and 54: Tombrello-39 clearly willing to pay
Page 55 and 56: Tombrello-41 my teaching assignment
Page 57 and 58: Tombrello-43 ASPATURIAN: No. TOMBRE
Page 59 and 60: Tombrello-45 Charlie, that’s numb
Page 61 and 62: Tombrello-47 heavy ions. Jancaitis
Page 63 and 64: Tombrello-49 because, no surprise,
Page 65 and 66: Tombrello-51 of a wreck somewhere.
Page 67 and 68: Tombrello-53 concurrent computers,
Page 69 and 70: Tombrello-55 your green card.” He
Page 71 and 72: Tombrello-57 USC. She said, “My n
Page 73 and 74: Tombrello-59 video of it. Brian was
Page 75 and 76: Tombrello-61 ASPATURIAN: Without th
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Tombrello-63 ASPATURIAN: Consciousn
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Tombrello-65 Stone reported this co
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Tombrello-67 says, “That is so im
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Tombrello-69 basement was where I l
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Tombrello-71 Graaff generators] at
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Tombrello-73 groups at Chicago, and
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Tombrello-75 TOMBRELLO: I think it
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Tombrello-77 TOMBRELLO: Yes. I reme
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Tombrello-79 TOMBRELLO: Well, it wa
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Tombrello-81 were made up of these
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Tombrello-83 TOMBRELLO: It had a re
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Tombrello-85 ASPATURIAN: It wasn’
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Tombrello-87 Remington bronzes but
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Tombrello-89 He’d done all kinds
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Tombrello-91 side, with totally ira
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Tombrello-93 TOMBRELLO: Yes. It too
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Tombrello-95 wouldn’t have asked
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Tombrello-97 U.S. independent of fo
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Tombrello-99 own operating people a
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Tombrello-101 particularly in compa
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Tombrello-103 Six months later, “
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Tombrello-105 necessary—that was
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Tombrello-107 make things harder. A
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Tombrello-109 TOMBRELLO: It really
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Tombrello-111 it. It was clearly an
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Tombrello-113 little bit—he had h
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Tombrello-115 protons, you didn’t
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Tombrello-117 Did she have an affai
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Tombrello-119 questions. But Murray
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Tombrello-121 marvelous teacher—h
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Tombrello-123 ASPATURIAN: What I ha
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Tombrello-125 ASPATURIAN: That woul
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Tombrello-127 and all sorts of thin
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Tombrello-129 ASPATURIAN: Someone e
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Tombrello-131 DuBridge interpreted
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Tombrello-133 sciences. They were g
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Tombrello-135 candidates came and g
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Tombrello-137 TOMBRELLO: I don’t
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Tombrello-139 TOMBRELLO: Yes. But I
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Tombrello-141 opposite sides. But h
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Tombrello-143 ASPATURIAN: Now, was
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Tombrello-145 ASPATURIAN: Really? T
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Tombrello-147 TOMBRELLO: Yes. I’d
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Tombrello-149 I believe he had a vi
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Tombrello-151 to predict something
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Tombrello-175 And then in the summe
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Tombrello-177 think you need that c
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Tombrello-179 nuclear counterterror
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Tombrello-181 spoiled by that. The
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Tombrello-183 particularly the weap
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Tombrello-185 set up to prevent wea
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Tombrello-187 with those that alrea
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Tombrello-189 powered by solar. The
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Tombrello-191 TOMBRELLO: I know. I
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Tombrello-193 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
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Tombrello-195 discretionary $19,000
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Tombrello-197 Lange is PMA chairman
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Tombrello-199 Witten’s here, Zewa
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Tombrello-201 There were many thing
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Tombrello-203 the key—the hallmar
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Tombrello-205 TOMBRELLO: Not exactl
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Tombrello-207 pieces of hardware th
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Tombrello-209 TOMBRELLO: It’s nic
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Tombrello-211 Wendy, until well int
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Tombrello-213 realized it was a wor
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Tombrello-215 you try for. But you
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Tombrello-217 TOMBRELLO: He did not
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Tombrello-219 ASPATURIAN: Just a re
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Tombrello-221 ASPATURIAN: How do yo
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Tombrello-223 He’s not dumb. OK.
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Tombrello-225 ASPATURIAN: And incre
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Tombrello-227 could control him. We
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Tombrello-233 down to the late stag
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Tombrello-235 THOMAS A. TOMBRELLO S
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Tombrello-237 the tandem laboratory
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Tombrello-239 picked Motorola’s 6
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Tombrello-241 ASPATURIAN: How did y
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Tombrello-243 town, staying in a ve
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Tombrello-245 TOMBRELLO: Somebody v
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Tombrello-247 years before, I’d s
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Tombrello-249 as good as you can im
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Tombrello-251 Los Alamos is a wonde
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Tombrello-253 TOMBRELLO: No. I thin
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Tombrello-255 navy, done the submar
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Tombrello-257 TOMBRELLO: —had don
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Tombrello-259 interesting people wh
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Tombrello-261 putting up a substant
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Tombrello-263 TOMBRELLO: I think so
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Tombrello-265 TOMBRELLO: There were
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Tombrello-267 at that, just to see
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Tombrello-269 ASPATURIAN: Is he ori
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Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

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