From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Sat Jun 14 2003 - 13:06:41 PDT
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From: Long Beach Press Telegram by Email
Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2003 3:41 PM
To: ljk4_at_msn.com
Subject: Noted L.B. telescope maker dies
Noted L.B. telescope maker dies
Obituary: Thomas Roland Cave III, 80, also worked on the Hubble.
By Paul Young, Staff writer
Friday, June 13, 2003 - LONG BEACH Thomas Roland Cave III, a world renowned telescope maker who dedicated his life to the night sky and worked on the Hubble Space Telescope, has died. He was 80 years old.
"He was always fascinated with the unknown and trying to figure out how it got there,' said Cave's daughter Davina Keiser on Friday. "He was always searching the sky.'
Tom Cave Biography
By the time Cave died on June 4, he had created more than 3,100 detailed drawings of Mars and 1,000 sketches of other planets, was credited as one of the first to report details about Saturn's rings, and gained recognition around the globe for his fine telescopes.
He eventually became known as a link between professional and amateur astronomers, encourag ing both groups to share information that, put together, would reveal clues about the universe.
Cave was born in Kansas City, Mo., on Feb. 3, 1923. His fascination with the galaxy began when he was just 7 years old after a visit to the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. He began reading what he could on astronomy, then started exploring the sky with a pair of World War I binoculars he got from his father. He purchased his first telescope after scraping money together from mowing lawns.
Cave moved to Los Angeles in 1931, then to Long Beach in the early spring of 1934. That same year, he helped form the Long Beach Excelsior Telescope Club and built his first telescope. In 1935, he began observing Mars.
"It really caught his fancy, and he started looking at Mars for the rest of his life,' Keiser said. "That was his lifelong fascination.'
His observations became so well-known that his name became synonymous with the Red Planet. "He was a top-flight Mars observer,' said friend Connie Chrones, who worked on the Apollo program that put the first astronauts on the moon. "He had a good eye.'
People still talk about a "perfect seeing' Cave and friend Robert Richardson made in 1956 that was so incredible they forgot to take pictures.
In recalling that moment, Cave wrote: "The planet had extremely fine details, and we felt that we were flying over the planet. The view was the most amazing one of Mars perhaps anyone has ever had from land-based stations. The steady view was totally beyond human description...At no other time have I seen more than 10 percent or 15 percent that we saw that night.'
Spending hours trying to get a view like that one was a huge part of who Cave was.
He built an observatory in his parents' back yard his senior year at Poly High School. Years later, Cave became known for building a telescope that required a 12-foot ladder just to reach the eye piece showing him stars and planets that were light-years away. One publication described the instrument "as a leviathan of a telescope.'
When World War II broke out, Cave temporarily left a job making telescopes at Herron Optical in Los Angeles to join the Army.
While he served as a medic on the battlefield he was awarded two Purple Hearts his lens- making skills landed him a unique assignment: Making a pair of eyeglasses for Gen. George S. Patton after his spectacles had broken.
When Cave returned to Long Beach, he enrolled in the University of Southern California, but stopped 16 units short of graduating.
In 1948, Cave and his father decided to go into the telescope business on their own, setting up shop in their garage. The pair had made so many telescope mirrors by 1950 that a year later they opened Cave Optical Company on Anaheim Street.
"The sharpness of his optics were extraordinary,' said Anthony Cook, a friend of Cave's and an astronomical observer for the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. "There was a period of time when Cave was the one you wanted to get. If you lived well, you'd get a Cave.'
The business which created telescopes for amateur astronomers, NASA and professional observatories survived until 1979, when Cave fell ill and hired someone to manage the shop. Within six months, his assets were liquidated and the manager disappeared, prompting him to seek work at Hughes Aircraft in El Segundo, Keiser said.
It was there that he participated in the construction of the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched into space in 1990 to look at galaxies from beyond the earth's atmosphere. His contribution was to the scope's optics.
Despite his accomplishments, Keiser said that her father was never one to brag.
"As kids growing up, we'd go to astronomy conferences every summer and people would say, 'You're Tom Cave's daughter? Wow!,'' Keiser said. "But we were like, 'What's the big deal?' because he never tooted his horn to us.'
To his family, he was an everyday kind of guy.
"He just happened to like astronomy and was a really good telescope maker,' Keiser said.
Cave is survived by his daughters, Keiser and Vanessa Cave; grandchildren, Erin and Ryan Keiser; and son-in-law Frank Keiser.
A memorial will be held for Cave on June 20 at 11 a.m. at Eastside Christian Church, near the corner of Seventh Street and Obispo Avenue.
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