Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–55
your green card.” He said, “They don’t seem to know what to do.” I said, “Well, I know what to
do. I’m going to give it to one of our trustees, a woman named Gayle Wilson [wife of former
California governor Pete Wilson].” I talked to Gayle and she says, “Oh, I know his
congresswoman. I’m in Washington in a couple of weeks, and we’ll just fix this.” The next
thing, he had a green card.
Gayle once asked a favor of me, and I never quite understood why she asked me. She
came to me and said, “I’m Swedish. I’m going to be fifty years old. And I would like to be
invited to the Nobel ceremonies.” And I said, “You’re coming to me?” She says, “I think you
can do it.” I said, “We’ll see.” But I did. Magic trick! That’s a magic trick I can occasionally
work.
ASPATURIAN: What did you do?
TOMBRELLO: Oh, I just asked somebody. Somebody I’d done a favor for, several favors for.
That’s the other thing, you see. You do favors for people without asking for anything in return.
I’m willing to do this—and often nothing ever happens. But sometimes, you need a favor or
they say, “Is there anything I can do for you?” And the answer is, “Well, since you asked, yes.”
Like the time I had a young faculty member here from Austria. He had taken a Fulbright early in
his career. And one of the conditions is, you have to go back to your country for a couple of
years. But Congress can get you an exemption. I had an old friend, and I said, “Karl, can you
help me?” He says, “You think Colin Powell’s signature will get it for you?” I said, “Yeah!”
He says, “I think you’ll have it by tomorrow afternoon, the exemption.” He runs the Office of
Polar Programs—the Arctic and Antarctica programs—for the NSF, which is a big deal, by the
way. The U.S. makes no territorial claims in Antarctica.
ASPATURIAN: Right, there’s a treaty, I think.
TOMBRELLO: But we have boots on the ground. There’s a few-hundred-million-dollar program
at the NSF that keeps boots on the ground. Now, they’re scientists but they’re still boots. So,
we’re down there. It doesn’t look like our army, but it does look like an occupying force.
They’re doing marvelous stuff. But see, that’s the thing. People will do favors for you. You do
favors for them. I learned later why Gayle Wilson had asked me. and not David Baltimore [1975
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