This is a story from Tom’s past that I had no direct part in, so I only have very sparse details to offer, and they are shrouded by the haze of nearly five decades. Nonetheless, some parts of this story seem truly amazing in retrospect. When I first met Tom in 1971, I soon started to get involved with constructing a small observatory for the Physics Department of the University of Idaho. You may wonder what talents a 13 year old kid could possibly offer to the University to work for such a complicated project. Well, I’m already getting sidetracked with a separate story, so for now I will suffice to say that while I was involved in this construction project with Tom, and a couple other soon-to-become friends, Shannon and Bill, we heard some stories about what Tom was planning for the approaching summer. We learned that there was a separate Tribe of boys that Tom was associated with who were slightly older than us, less inclined towards astronomy and such things, and amazingly, planning a summer trip to the USSR.
I came to realize that besides being a physics professor who could put young boys like myself to work on stimulating, educational projects, he was also leading a Boy Scout troop. A major activity with his Scout troop was planning and following through with very ambitious summer trips that would consume most of the nearly three month period of summer vacation for the high school boys. Within a few months of first meeting Tom, he and six of the Scouts departed on one such trip that ventured to various parts of Europe and spent some weeks on the dark side of the iron curtain. As I mentioned earlier, this Tribe of boys was not really part of my up-and-coming Tribe. We met some of those OLDER boys from time to time, but we were separate, seemingly outcasts. Adolescence is a tough period, what can I say. Shannon, Bill and I would go on to participate in separate adventures in later summers, though we didn’t know that at the time. We knew that Tom was super generous with his time that he spent with us. But also, he was very involved with his “other family” that was planning an exotic trip to far flung parts of the world. People who knew Tom will undoubtedly attest to his high energy level, and his amazing ability to juggle multiple ambitious projects simultaneously.
I later came to understand that Tom had a fascination with Russia and the USSR that went back to his college days. While studying at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate physics major, he also took some years of Russian from a very rigorous and tough professor who kicked his ass. Tom said that the Russian language was the hardest thing he ever studied, and that’s saying a lot. Uncharacteristically, Tom said he was usually very grateful to receive a grade of B for Russian despite his hard work studying. I have no doubt that his interest in the Russian language is what planted the seed for him to eventually go through the many hoops that were required to bring a group of Boy Scouts to the USSR.
I don’t remember many details about their trip, and I am fairly sure that most of Tom’s pictures and memorabilia were destroyed in a fire some years later. They had obtained fairly cheap charter airfare between Spokane and a major city in Europe, possibly in Germany. Soon after arriving, Tom took delivery of a VW Van that he had arranged to purchase to use for transportation during the summer in Europe and USSR. At the end of the trip this van was shipped to his home to replace his aging and much loved Dodge van (that would continue its life with Doyne in California). Unfortunately, the new VW never became a close friend of Tom’s. He actually grew to hate the thing soon after it arrived back home, and he especially hated the great expense of foreign car parts that were always breaking.
They traveled to a bunch of countries in Europe, among them being Germany, Italy, Greece, France, Sweden and Finland. Some of the boys even arranged for purchase of bicycles, and rode their bikes to separate regions and subsequently rejoined the van-based group. The kicker, was that they crossed into the USSR, and traveled all around as if that was a perfectly normal thing to do. Bear in mind that the cold war was a real and ongoing part of world politics, and many people were suspicious about someone having an interest in anything remotely related to communism. For an American to willingly set foot in a country chock full of communists and wander about for weeks was probably viewed as lunacy or possibly treason by many at the time. Despite such hyper-sentiments being widespread, Tom seemed to approach travel in the USSR as he viewed travel anywhere. He thrived on going to new places and meeting new people. He collected stories from the people he met and the things he saw, and it was all completely innocent.
I only remember bits and pieces about the travels they had in the USSR. For example, they made a game out of speculating whether each partial building that they happened to be driving past was in the process of being constructed or demolished. The difficulty of making this seemingly simple determination was a profound statement about the sad quality of workmanship in the Soviet society. On a different note, they had some occasions to see the crops that were on display and traded on the “black market”. Such markets were largely tolerated by the government even though they were not part of the officially sanctioned Soviet infrastructure. Probably, if the markets had been forcibly outlawed, there would have been another revolution. These simple markets were places where people could take pride in the fruits of their labor, and be rewarded in kind for their efforts (smells like capitalism right?). In short, many of Tom’s stories that were collected from this trip related to how dysfunctional the Soviet system was when witnessed first hand while simply traveling about.
Unfortunately, there’s not much more that I can offer from my own indirect memories that relate to this summer adventure that Tom and his friends made to the USSR. It’s worth taking note that I refer to Tom and the boys as friends because that’s exactly what they were. Certainly, with the age difference, Tom was the natural leader of the group, and a father figure in a way. But more so, he was a friend with each of them as he had been and would become friends with so many boys in similar adventures during his life. Tom had an uncanny ability to relate to the boys he associated with. No matter what topic was of interest to any individual, Tom could assuredly participate in depth, and by so doing, provide support to each developing young mind. Though it often felt like Tom was just one of the boys, in retrospect, I realize this was not the case. In fact, Tom was a very confident and capable leader who gained all participants respect and trust. At times he also provided counsel to individuals who might be going through some drama, and needed some help to figure things out. Other times, he would see fit to point out to someone, and that was sometimes me, that they had better take some steps to improve some aspect of their behavior. With Tom’s ability to coax people along from boyhood towards maturity, the social atmosphere sailed along at a remarkably even keel. Disagreements were not infrequent, but they were almost always managed quickly and without lasting aftereffects. The fact that these groups sometimes were organized officially as Boy Scouts provided a safe cover and legitimacy that almost any outsider could accept and welcome without question. Boy Scouts could be guests at a US Navy base for example with relative ease, whereas a group of “friends” who might possibly be communists would certainly not be welcome.
How is it, you may be wondering, that I chose this story to write about? Now that Tom has passed away, and he remains only in the memories of people like me, I feel a certain obligation to put at least some of my memories that involve him into words. But how does one embark on such a huge undertaking? I’m reminded of how Tom would like to quote from Lewis Caroll’s “Alice In Wonderland,” and he especially loved the following (which I didn’t remember verbatim, but instead, looked up):
The White Rabbit put on his spectacles. “Where shall I begin, please your Majesty?” he asked. “Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
This story does not represent the first, chronologically speaking, but it is the first for which I found the motivation to do some writing. Without intending to start writing a story, I happened somewhat randomly to recall the title of a book that Tom had worked on called “The Art and Science of Electronics.” It turns out that the title shows up today on Google, but it has apparently not been published. A few mouse clicks later, I stumbled onto another link that mentioned Tom’s name in connection with the USSR and the FBI. That in turn triggered a whole set of memories I had not thought about in years. Today I remembered, with help from Google, that back in 1971 there had been a piece in Time magizine (I think) that described the trip being organized by a physics professor in Idaho to bring some Boy Scouts to the Soviet Union. It was national news! Certainly, Tom never sought the attention of the media. Rather, they came after him, looking for dirt no doubt, and fueled with a leak that he was under investigation by the FBI. However, Tom, being who he was, simply told his innocent story, and the questions rolled off of him like water off a duck’s back. Despite the attention in the news, Tom eventually did receive travel visas from the Soviet embassy for himself and the “Scouts”. Maybe some of Tom’s success here can be attributed to luck, since there were many less fortunate people from earlier times whose lives were turned upside down from the lies of Senator McCarthy and his cronies. I didn’t try looking into the Time magazine archives to see if my memory is correct. However, I did find the story recounted online in a preview of the book “Spying on America” by James Kirkpatrick Davis, on page 14. There one can find an account of this hoopla in the press at the time.
Following the Google bread crumbs a bit further, I learned that Tom’s name found its way into the congressional record of the US Senate on October 28, 1975, pg. 33902. An excerpt from this record is attached below.
In normal circumstances, I would be at a point in this short tale to say “the end”, and finish with the hope that I may have conveyed the basic facts and impressions from some discrete episode. However, the circumstances of the present time are not really normal since Tom has but recently passed away. When losing someone who has been an important part of your life, be they a family member or a dear friend, there is no rest for the mind. There is much to work through in dealing with the many emotions that come forward unannounced demanding attention. Having been through such periods before, I know this is just one of life’s many natural processes, and it will subside. What seems to keep me going is the very real sense that Tom, and others before him, never really leave, but instead, remain a part of me. The stories from our shared past have become more than events localized in time, and have merged together in my psyche. In part, they define me. Periods like the present time cause me to remember the book “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, (who happens to be another author that Tom turned me onto). The main character, Billy Pilgrim, with assistance from the Tralfamadorians of Titan, became unstuck in time. He could dwell in any part of his life, between his birth and death, at his own choosing. No part of his lifetime took on a special significance of being “the present.” Needless to say, I don’t have this nirvana-like ability myself, but I get just a hint of this, when I recall some vivid detail from the past. So when I occasionally hear Tom’s voice as a distant ripple across time, it's a welcome reminder that he remains a part of me.
On that note, I really will say “the end,” at least for now. I realize I’m at the beginning of what I hope to accomplish since there remain a wealth of stories that await distillation into sensible words. It’s very easy to say that Tom touched many people in significant ways, but it’s much harder to recount the oodles of stories that put meat on that statement. Hopefully, with sufficient time, I will make more progress on this.
