Tuxedo Park

by Jennet Conant

  The newlyweds steered clear of New York for several months, honeymooning at Del Monte Lodge, and in Carmel and San Francisco. Ernest and Molly Lawrence hosted a Saturday afternoon cocktail party in their honor and invited Don Cooksey and all the cyclotroneers. They celebrated later that night over dinner at Trader Vic’s, their old haunt, and organized a big picnic lunch at Muir Woods on Sunday. While they all wanted to be happy for Loomis, for whom they had tremendous admiration and affection, the Berkeley scientists, many of whom had met Manette on visits to Tuxedo Park when she was still Mrs. Garret Hobart, were every bit as astonished by the turn of the events as Loomis’ old club crowd. It is clear from the correspondence between Loomis and Lawrence throughout this period that even his closest colleague and friend failed to detect that anything was seriously amiss in his marriage. Lawrence had seen Ellen last in the fall of 1944 and had written thanking them for their hospitality—“it was certainly a real treat visiting you and Ellen again”—and expressing his delight that they were planning on “coming out in the spring.”

  One can only imagine his surprise, to put it mildly, upon learning that a new Mrs. Loomis would be accompanying him on that trip. But the war had disrupted all their lives, and the years of all-consuming research, exacerbated by the burden of distance and secrecy, had taken a heavy toll on many marriages. If not exactly approving—Lawrence’s wife, Molly, and Ellen had become quite close—they were not inclined to judge him, either, and welcomed his new wife with open arms. Manette may have discerned a certain reserve on the part of some of the wives and once remarked that she did not get to know Molly very well in those first few years because she was “so wrapped up in her children that she didn’t have time,” though whether that was by necessity or by design is unclear.

  In any case, they usually saw Lawrence alone. He and Manette got along famously and quickly formed a very close bond. She encouraged him to take up painting to relax and later made him pose for a large bronze bust she did of his handsome head. “We always used to joke that I was his teacher and he was my pupil,” recalled Manette, who regarded him as far more “human” than most scientists. “We could tease him; he loved that. He loved having a good time. He was full of life. He loved going out with people, and dancing with pretty girls when they went along.” Lawrence continued to visit Loomis in New York whenever he could and frequently accompanied them on jaunts to Jamaica and Balboa. The three of them reveled in one another’s company, and Lawrence and Manette would flirt outrageously with each other, much to Loomis’ evident pride and amusement.

  On their return to New York, the couple moved into a large apartment in the Mayfair House, a sort of residential hotel that provided all the amenities, including room service and housekeeping, which Loomis, who had spent the war years in hotels, had come to appreciate. Manette’s domestic skills were also minimal, so it suited them both perfectly. Loomis also purchased a lovely summer home in East Hampton, Long Island, not far from R. W. Wood’s old farmhouse, with plenty of room for Manette’s sons when they were home from boarding school. But nothing prepared them for the inhospitable climate they had returned to. Most of the extended Loomis and Stimson tribe were not on speaking terms with him, and few of his blue-blooded peers wanted anything to do with his foreign wife. They got a decidedly chilly reception at the exclusive Maidstone Club in East Hampton. “I think it cut him very deeply,” said Lynn Chase, who can still remember the way people publicly snubbed Manette. “Here he had all this money and power, and he could not buy the approval of the Maidstone community.”

  LOOMIS spent the next few months overseeing the dismantling of his laboratory and winding up millions of dollars in contracts. Things had been shipped in all directions, and many scientists were so anxious to help that they would send something to the Pacific without making any record of it. Thanks to Gaither and his crack team of administrators, every piece of equipment would be accounted for. “Out of the $30 million in outstanding claims for the government, MIT did not have to pay one cent,” Loomis later observed, “because he realized and I realized the government can thank you for doing something in an emergency, but along comes an order that wants to know where these typewriters are. . . .”

  For most of the people who had worked there, it was hard to believe that an institution as big and vital as the Rad Lab could simply be shut down, but Loomis did just that. Never one to be sentimental, he scoffed at those who were reluctant to lock the doors and turn off the lights. By the end of summer, the penthouse sheds had been stripped of their antennas and knocked down, and most of the main laboratories had been emptied, with only marks on the linoleum to show where the furniture had been. Building 22, where Alvarez had done some of his finest work, was closed off, and carpenters were already at work turning it back into dormitory space for incoming MIT students. Like most endings, the Rad Lab’s was not nearly as glorious as its beginnings, when it opened for business in the fall of 1940, fourteen months before Pearl Harbor, on the strength of Loomis’ vision and the three dozen physicists who shared it.

  In the end, after “five years of furious technology,” the atom bomb stole its thunder. “On the evening of August 5, 1945,” the official yearbook noted, “the Laboratory found itself in the same position as the overwrought butler”:

  It had worked in secret. Newsmen had long since despaired of a story. But now it was to be told. An open invitation went to the press and newsreels. “Guided Tours” were set up for the next day. A painstaking “news release” was written. And a little before the 7:30 PM deadline, a messenger in a special car was sent off to the news offices of Boston. At 7:15 the messenger phoned in. She had delivered half of her releases, and could deliver no more. Her car was blocked by people running around in the street and kissing one another. It appeared that at 7:00 PM Japan’s surrender had been announced.

  Although the press covered the laboratory later, the thrill was gone, and its glorious achievements got short shrift. Time magazine’s scheduled cover story on radar was bumped to page seventy-eight, and the new cover, celebrating V-J Day, credited the work of the Los Alamos physicists. The men who worked on the atomic bomb were hailed as heroes, and countless books and Hollywood movies would recount their exploits, while the daring and inventive minds who created radar were largely forgotten. The Manhattan Project became world famous. The Tizard Mission faded into obscurity. Only the Rad Lab veterans knew better, knew that if radar had not kept the Germans from defeating England, the war might have been over before America entered the contest. Everyone who had worked at the laboratory understood the decisive role their deadly devices had played in speeding the day of victory, and it was reflected in a remark by DuBridge that became something of an unofficial slogan, their badge of honor: “Radar won the war; the atom bomb ended it.”

  In a strange sense, it was exactly the conclusion Loomis would have written himself. For the record, the yearbook tallied their successes: the lab had begun as a gamble, and it had paid off. They had started out behind and finished ahead. They had made history, smashed the U-boat, and shot down German planes and V-1s. Along the way, they had introduced some revolutionary concepts into warfare and significantly advanced knowledge in the field, packing decades of radar development into only a few years. They had also given birth to a new billion-dollar industry, and at least half a dozen companies were either stating or implying in their advertising copy that radar was their own private invention. While proud of everything they had accomplished, Loomis and his physicists were personally “embarrassed by the problem of telling what they had done,” an awkwardness that was reflected in the Rad Lab’s perfunctory official statements in the days and weeks that followed. Of course, it was impossible to overstate their debt to the British, not to mention prior work done by the U.S. Navy and Army Signal Corps, and therefore difficult to know how much to lay claim to, not to mention the perennial problem of sorting out who did what in the white heat of the moment.1

  The Rad Lab formally closed on December 31,
1945. Most of the physicists returned to their university jobs and resumed their careers as professors and research scientists. After completing all his administrative duties as head of the OSRD’s radar section in 1947, Loomis returned to his former activities as a philanthropist, withdrawing quietly into private life. Almost from the moment the Rad Lab ceased operating, Loomis began to disappear. He refused requests for interviews and photographs, and proved so elusive that to get his portrait to accompany their glowing account of his adventures in business and science, Fortune magazine had to pursue him by plane all the way to his private twenty-two-thousand-acre retreat on Hilton Head Island. He turned down prestigious job offers and university appointments, including a long-standing offer from Lawrence to come work with him at his Berkeley laboratory. After the war, he was besieged by letters asking for his support for various scientific causes and research projects, along with innumerable invitations to speak before civilian groups—“this Rotary club, that Women’s auxiliary,” as he put it—most of which he ignored. The requests to sign his name to various protests and petitions were promptly tossed in the waste bin.

  Except for occasional appearances at various advisory committee meetings, including an Atomic Energy Commission Panel on Radiological Warfare and the Joint Research and Development Board headed by Bush to counsel the army and navy on strategic matters, Loomis was absent from the Washington scene where he had only recently been such a forceful presence. He was, by disposition, an extremely understated man who really did not care for being center stage. A large part of his success as the laboratory’s leader had been his charisma and persuasiveness, a positive thrust that enabled him to win the confidence of so many brilliant scientists and convince them that supporting and furthering their work was his only goal. While he had teamed up with Lawrence as a pioneer of “big science,” organizing massive industrial and government funding for his large-scale projects, and in the process changing forever the expenditures of money and manpower that would be committed to such research efforts, his true allegiance was always with “little science.” He wanted nothing more than to return to the solitary wizardry of men like R. W. Wood, lone experimentalists who, working practically by themselves in a private laboratory, succeeded in making major contributions to the frontiers of knowledge.

  Loomis followed his passion for science to Washington, and then into war, but political influence was something that neither interested him nor held any allure. He did not care to join the ranks of physicists-turned-elder statesmen who were trotted out at conventions and government seminars, to be “exhibited as lions at Washington tea parties,” as the distinguished physicist Samuel K. Allison described “the awe and gratitude of the scientifically illiterate lay world.” Independence was a luxury he could afford, and it enabled him to remain detached, and slightly above, the postwar scramble for position and power that consumed so many of his colleagues.

  Although he attempted to avoid attention and public recognition wherever possible, he continued to collect laurels. There was another honorary degree—this one from Wesleyan. In February 1948, while out in California visiting Lawrence, Loomis received a letter from the British embassy informing him that he was to receive one of their country’s highest decorations:

  It is with great pleasure that I inform you that the King has been pleased to award His Majesty’s Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom in recognition of the valuable services you rendered to the Allied War effort in the various fields of scientific research and development.

  That spring, Harry Truman awarded him the Presidential Medal of Merit, the highest civilian award, for his contribution as one of the leading scientific generals of the war. In the ceremony on Governors Island on the morning of June 23, 1948, Loomis was cited for his “exceptional meritorious conduct” and the “performance of outstanding services” to the United States from June 1940 to December 1945:

  Dr. Loomis, as Chairman of the Microwave Committee of the National Defense Research Committee, early foresaw the military possibilities of microwave frequencies for radar detection and ranging. His personal qualities and enthusiasm enabled him to enlist the services of many brilliant physicists and engineers in the coordinated development of this new art. . . . A brilliant experimentalist endowed with extraordinary foresight, Dr. Loomis was a central figure in this development program that contributed so significantly to the successful termination of the war.

  At the close of the ceremonies, General Courtney H. Hodges told the scientists who were being honored that day, among them pioneers of rockets, antiaircraft weapons, and infrared equipment, that he understood their reluctance toward “the wholesale transference of intellectual effort to destruction.” He assured them, however, that they had a distinguished precedent in the great mathematician Archimedes, who turned his genius to the defense of the Greek city of Syracuse and destroyed the invading Roman armies with his fireballs, mirrors, and ingenious instruments of violence.

  The allusion to Olympic glory was wasted on Loomis, who suffered from no guilt or lingering doubts about his part in developing weapons of war. Unlike many of the scientists who worked on the bomb, he did not regret the “atomic age” or question the morality of devising even more fearful devices. In fact, Loomis felt there ought to be more courage in experimentation in nuclear physics than before and always expressed great faith that scientists could see to it that their products were used responsibly and to the benefit of mankind. He believed in exploring new scientific knowledge to its fullest extent, moving forward without fear of where the experiments might lead. Nobody could foresee all the possibilities and how they might be applied not only to war, but also to peacetime and utilitarian purposes, with incredible potential advantage to civilization. He could not imagine that any “true scientist” could feel differently: “If you want to find the truth, you must continue to experiment.” It was the optimistic credo he had believed in thoroughly all his life. He saw no reason to abandon it now because some people trembled at the awesome power of a nuclear explosion.

  Loomis was drawn into the debate over the further testing of nuclear weapons as well as other postwar developments, but increasingly from the remove of his East Hampton home. He made himself available for consultation on his personal opinions but did not care to serve as a spokesman for any particular group or ideology. Leaders in government and industry continued to seek out his counsel because of his long record of success and the almost prophetic accuracy of his appraisals of both men and events. He seemed at times to possess a “seerlike vision,” observed Caryl Haskins, who would succeed Bush as president of Carnegie. It was, he wrote, “an insight given only to the greatest of men.”

  For the most part, Loomis disparaged politics and thought it a great pity that so many good scientists were squandering their time and energy on policy problems when they could be pursuing fundamental research instead. He continued to be a close adviser to Lawrence on all matters and cautioned him to avoid getting caught up in wasteful political activity. He even asked Gaither, who had returned to his legal practice in San Francisco, to keep an eye on his generous friend and make sure he did not fall victim to pressure groups. Loomis made a rare exception to this rule a year later when Gaither was asked by the air force to organize the Rand Corporation, a nonprofit outfit that would apply the “best scientific abilities and achievements” to ensure the national defense, and pleaded with Loomis to become founding trustee. He was finally persuaded and was tremendously influential in the pioneering phase of the organization and later even brought Lawrence onto the board.

  Loomis never reopened his Tuxedo Park laboratory. At one point, he looked into the possibility of donating the lab to the Rockefeller Foundation or similar nonprofit outfit, but the Tuxedo Park Association was adamantly opposed to the continued operation of a research facility within its confines. He tried to get more than one neighbor to take the property off his hands and found he literally could not give it away. By the end of the war, Tuxedo was in a terrible d
ecline. Old-time resorters had deserted it, and with more than half of the sprawling “cottages” vacant and run-down, it had become known as “the Graveyard of the Aristocracy.” As Cleveland Amory observed in 1948, “No other community in this country ever started off on a grander social scale, and therefore no other may be said to have fallen so hard.” Loomis finally sold the Tower House to a developer, who renovated the property into separate rental units and renamed it the Villa Apartments. Almost immediately thereafter, the Tuxedo Park by-laws were changed to prevent the conversion of any other historic mansion into condominium complexes. The Tower House’s Tudor facade with its single tower remains substantially unchanged, however, and the dark, ornate entrance hall still seems haunted by old ghosts. His beloved Glass House was purchased by a park resident and has been preserved as a private home, its stark white design and double glass walls testifying to the bold ideals of a bygone era.

  In his memoirs, Alvarez, who called Loomis “the last of the great amateurs,” lamented that his enormous contributions to science and his country would not be remembered, while conceding that it was “an anonymity of which he would have approved but which hardly does him justice.” But Loomis had no interest in assuming an elevated mantle. Taffy Bowen, who had often marveled at the mysterious way Loomis, “as if by magic,” knew exactly how to get a project started or where to obtain the requisite materials, discovered years later the lengths his American friend had often gone to in order “to avoid taking credit for the developments with which he was associated.” So Bowen was not surprised that when it came to his role in the construction of Lawrence’s giant cyclotrons and the development of microwave radar, “he took pains to see that his part in it was covered up.” Looking back, he wrote, “the extraordinary thing is the modesty with which all of this was done.”