2002 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI NOMINEE

Thomas A. Boster, class of 1954

Tom started his education in first grade at Cassingham Elementary School. Tom’s high school academic career was less than inspiring. To him, a ‘C’ was a great grade. He excelled on the football field, however, and earned a scholarship to Capital University where he remained indifferent to his education into his junior year. 

Convinced that he would eventually flunk out, Tom became a physics major because he thought it would look better to his family if he failed in a rigorous pursuit. When asked by a professor where he planned to attend graduate school, he replied, “What’s graduate school? You mean there’s more?”

When, on the college football field during his junior year he watched an angry teammate taking out his frustrations on a tackling sledge, he had his epiphany, realizing that there had to be more to life than beating up on an inanimate object. 

After this moment of enlightenment, Tom applied himself and earned (almost) straight A’s and made the Dean’s List during his junior and senior years. He went on to earn a Masters and a Doctorate degree in physics from Ohio University and taught in the physics department at Oklahoma City University where he received the Danforth Award. 

Following graduation, he went to work for the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, doing research on X-ray laser technology. He also did research on hydrogen bomb explosions conducted a mile and half underground. 

He attracted the attention of Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” who summoned him to the Hoover Institute to discuss his research. They later became colleagues, and Teller used part of Tom’s research to propose to President Reagan the Strategic Defense Initiative “Star Wars” missile defense system. 

In 1980, Tom organized an engineering consulting firm that has grown to include the major engineering and scientific disciplines. Tom’s daredevil nature later merged with his professional background to launch him into the area of accident investigation. His firm has been asked to investigate high-profile cases, including the crash that caused the death of Princess Diana, Robby Knievel’s jump over Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and the crash that rendered legendary jockey Willie Shoemaker a quadriplegic. 

Tom designed the successful jump by Evel Knievel’s son Robby, over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace, a jump the elder rider had failed to make. 

In Princess Diana’s accident investigation, Tom took no money because “it seemed inappropriate to take money where I’d be profiting from her death.” He was recruited to investigate the accident by French lobbyists in search of better roads in Paris. He said it took 109 minutes to get her to a hospital five minutes away. If her broken artery had been stitched up in time and had she worn a restraint, he believes she would have lived. 

In the case of Shoemaker, Tom said he was drunk at the time and crashed his Ford Bronco over an embankment. Tom was asked to investigate whether a guardrail would have made a difference. In a Ford Bronco, Tom drove it over the same embankment seven times. He was not hurt, proving that the average motorist would not have been seriously injured in a similar accident. The two differences were that in his test he did not try to turn back to the left and he was not drunk. He also noted that when a “good Samaritan” found Shoemaker with his head rolled back and having trouble breathing, he moved his neck to try to help. Tom explained that you don’t move someone with a broken neck. He worked on the case for two and one-half years.

Accident investigation took him onto the sets of Hollywood movies, where he began designing stunts for such productions as “Terminator 2.” 

Tom’s work has taken him all over the world, from Egypt to Israel, from the lava fields of Hawaii to London and Paris, where he continues to investigate the crash that killed Princess Diana. 

Tom has over 70 presentations and publications and has authored sections of three books on technical, engineering and forensic subjects. He never could have envisioned the career he has followed while he was faking it in Latin class 48 years ago.