Tom Roberts, IE 59, of Washington, D.C. on June 11.
In 1978, when he was 41, Roberts had already become CEO of and sold off Southern Boiler and Tank Works, the nuclear-reactor component manufacturer his father had founded; the next phase of his career took him to Washington, D.C., where he worked as treasurer of George H.W. Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign. Next, he took up a post on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, serving until his retirement in 1990.
That was his public career, at least. Until his death, few knew of the private pursuit that defined much of his life: his passion for rare, antique violins— an interest he picked up after his daughter began taking lessons in the 1970s. For almost 20 years he owned the infamously prized “Hellier” violin crafted by Antonio Stradivari in the late 1600s; in 1979, that Hellier plus another Stradivarius were among the more than a dozen rare Italian instruments he loaned out to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. (His collection also included a violin owned by Benito Mussolini.)
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