Interview with Lee F. Browne - Caltech Oral Histories

Browne–40
BROWNE: You can’t just sit back and wait.
COHEN: Yes.
BROWNE: You see, I used to send kids to school here from Blair and Muir. And they would
come to me and say, “Listen, Mr. Browne. Can you show me what the hell this guy was talking
about? I’m lost.” And I’d say, “Well, here’s the key to this. And if you’d redo that, you might
understand that.” And then he’d call me up and say, “I got it.” So you have to really—
COHEN: Dig. You have to know how to dig.
BROWNE: You’ve got to really dig.
COHEN: OK. So you really were here for a long time.
BROWNE: Twenty-something years.
COHEN: And you ran good programs.
BROWNE: Well, made money.
COHEN: And then things changed, because people wanted to do it differently.
BROWNE: Well, yes. And I never argued with them. I mean, you don’t ever see me hanging
around Caltech. I’m not a Caltech hanger-on. [Chuckle] That is, I never went to see—what’s
her name that went to the minority office? Cheryll Hawthorne. I never have met her.
COHEN: So there’s been a succession of people, but the programs have been different?
BROWNE: Yes.
http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Browne_L