by Kristine Tollestrup, August 9, 2020
I would like to add a special remembrance about my father that is not about the physicist, but about him as a father to a daughter. As the only daughter in a family with three boys, I had a different relationship with my father. My brothers went to CalTech with him on weekends and worked in the shop with all the tools and soldering irons. On the other hand, as a baby, I experienced the synchrotron with a lead brick on my dress so I couldn’t crawl away and get into mischief!
My father always felt that physics was the highest level of science and that physicists could easily solve problems in other fields of science such as biology. I was getting my PhD in behavioral ecology when I invited him to come catch lizards with me. So, one weekend, he came to visit me on my study site in the middle of the Central Valley where I was studying an endangered species of leopard lizards. The standard method of catching the lizards was using a fly fishing rod with a dental floss noose at the end. Very effective at catching lizards that scooted away into their burrows when you were ten feet away! My father, though, decided that this was not the best way to catch a lizard. So, he put the noose around the opening of a burrow and waited patiently until the lizard re-appeared. Then, all he had to do was jerk the fishing pole up and, voila, there was captured lizard. He did this sitting on the ground in the summer sun watching the burrow until the lizard pu t its head out far enough into the noose to be caught. I have a picture of him sitting with my floppy pink hat on his head next to a burrow waiting for the lizard to appear. It’s one of my favorite memories of him.
My son (Chris) and my daughter (Lizzie) were both fortunate to spend time with Grandpa T and Janine. Chris would get Lizzie to help him wash the beloved red mustang that Grandpa drove out to Fermilab when he first arrived. Alas, my father sold the mustang a few years ago since he felt it was too dangerous a car for a young man! At my father’s 70th birthday in Driggs, the three of them spent several hours watching the monster truck rodeo. Who knew my father loved mud trucks!. As my daughter grew older she became very passionate about public health and would take on her grandfather in lively, intense discussions.
My father was such a talented man, and I am so happy to hear all the stories of his life as a physicist. As his daughter, I am learning new things about his accomplishments in his professional life. However, in my heart, he will always be the father who was such an important part of my childhood and adulthood and the grandfather who was part of my children’s lives.
I miss him terribly and keep finding myself wanting to ask him things, especially what he might think about what is happening with this pandemic. I am sure he would be in seventh heaven trying to figure out how physicists could solve the problem!