Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 14

14A ST. KTERUURQ TIMES FRIDAY. MAY 19. 197S Is this an apartment complex or an oil drilling island? OR. jrT QrTii TrrM.

If you gueeaed the former, you (and a lot of people in Long Beech, Calif.) have bean footed. The luxury apartments in photo at left are merely a facade to hide the grimy interior of Grissom Island, right. Grissom and three other disguised islands off Long Beach are actually used for oil drilling. 3 Li i-J- j. .4 i i ByROKRTJ.

GORE Lm AnaatM Ttm LONG BEACH, Calif. What ia 10 acres in area, hat about 100 hole drilled in it, ia related to Disneyland and til just offshore? It's not the Quetn Mary. Give up? An oil island has 10 acres of land, at least 100 wells drilled in it, cosmetic camouflage created by a Disneyland designer and sita just offshore. "THE ISLANDS arc unique," said THUMS President Donald Craggs. Then ia nothing like them anywhere.

They are compatible with the shoreline and an asset to the environment "There have been no incidents," Craggs said of the islands' 12-year history of pumping oil without a spill. "Thank goodness Just in case, THUMS has covered iU bet by putting spill containment and fire fighting equipment on each island. Nearly 400-million barrels of oil have been produced from wells on the islands and nearby Pier said W. F. Ellison, THUMS vice The THUMS contract with the city expires in the year 2000.

If it is still profitable to extract oil, THUMS will try to extend its term, Ellison said. IF THE OIL operation leaves the islands, they will be turned into "some kind of recreation area, but nothing specific has been planned," said Leonard Brock, director of the city's Department of Oil Properties. The "buildings" usually attract the most visitor attention, Ellison explained. Designed by a firm that contracted for several Disneyland rides, the 180-foot-tall structures sprout in multicolored splendor from each of the four islands. They are on Urge rails and can be moved around the perimeter of the island, Ellison said.

This has resulted in calls from anxious island-watchers, telling THUMS in alarmed tones. "Hey, your building just moved!" The structures draw another type of call, Ellison added: "We still get 'em," Ellison acknowledged. "Last week we had another one. "This little old lady wanted to know if she could rent an apartment I told her we didn't have any vacancies." THUMS. "But shouldn't that be TEUMS?" one might ask.

Actually, Exxon was Humble then. Besides, TEUMS is not as catchy as THUMS. Island Freeman is about ltt miles from shore, but the other three sit a few hundred yards off the beach. They were named after astronauts who lost their lives in the U.S. space program.

Built with 160,000 tons of granite rock barged from Catalina Island quarries and yards of sand pumped from the ocean bottom, the islands were declared the outstanding engineering achievement of 1966 by the National Society of Professional Engineers. THE FOUR OIL islands, Grissom, White, Chaffee and Freeman, were finished in 1966 bv a consortium of oil companies: Texaco, Exxon', Union, Mobil and Shell. It called itself Limited time. He's not exactly your typical Yale president By SALLY QUMN 'Tha fact that one doas not look or aoundlika ona'a diatinguiahad pradacaaaora does not maka ona catatonic' Yale President Giamatti the poem he likes the best His academic credentials are impeccable. His father was a professor of Italian at Mt Holyoke.

Giamatti went to Andover, then Yale, graduated magna cum laude, got his ThD, taught at Princeton and finally ended up at Yale, So luindi for co littb! Warcb 5.1-cu.ft. hozczv. where, since 1971, he has been a full protc WASHINGTON There was certainly something different about Angelo Bartlett Giamatti He was flip, funny, iconoclastic. He was a sports nut He used four-letter words. He was 39.

And he was, well, ethnic Not exactly what you'd have in mind for the president of Yale University. But they were hip, forward thinking, open minded, this governing board of trustees, the Yale Corp. So on Dec 20, 1977, Angelo Bartlett Giamatti was elected the 19th president of Yale University. HE WAS COOL about it "The only thing I ever wanted to be president of was the American League," he had said. "I was doing exactly what I had always aspired to da Be an English teacher at Yale." It worked.

Glowing reports were filed all across the country as editorials praised the courageous and imaginative choice of this irreverent, boisterous, youthful Italian-American president. But then suddenly he was actually president of Yale. He didn't look like one or act or talk like one. But he wasn't fazed. "The fact that one does not look or sound like one's distinguished predecessors does not make one catatonic," he said.

BUT RECENTLY, after all the fanfare, the YaU Daily Newt wrote about him in less than flattering terms. They had taken a second look. What had the Yale Corp. done? They had appointed a man as president of Ysle who was flip, funny, iconoclastic and he was only 39. "When one is president" says Giamatti, only slightly bumbled, "one has to regard one's personality traits ss defects.

"That's what happens," he says, "when you take a private style and institutionalize it. There's no way to win when you're being criticized for the same traits that were the very reason you were chosen in the first place." He shrugs, the prisoner of his own style, and laughs. "So I figure you forget it" Giamatti is gregarious snd casual. He is a combination of bombastic Italian and proper New England WASH from his mother's side. HE LOOKS OLDER thsn his 40 years; there sre a lot of gray hairs but he doesn't seem to be particularly concerned about his recent birthday.

"Compared to the impact of my new responsibilities the idea of being 40 doesn't strike me at all," he says. With the assumption of his new mantle of power and with the passing into his 41st year, Giamatti has taken on the air of a don, a man of respect. Medieval and Renaissance literature is his field. Spenser snd Dante are his favorites, Spenser's Faerie Queene HE HAS published several books and essays, he has written about sports for Harper's mags fine and he has performed in local theater productions. Being named president of Yale was pretty such of a shock to Giamatti.

"I kept reading about it and kept seeing my name os various list," he says. there was no overwhelming evidenor that 1 was his (preceding president Kingman Brewster first choice. It was neither my ambition nor my choice and 1 certainly wasn't sitting passively in the corner waiting for the phone to ring." But ring it did and Giamatti was thrust into the leadership of a murumiiliuD-duliar corporation. Giamatti follows is the controversial though illustrious footsteps of Brewster, who is now the U.S. ambassador tu the Court of James.

Giamatti and hie wile recently pent four days in London conferring with his predecessor. THE TWO COULD hardly be further apart in style; perhaps, too, in substance. For one thing, BreweU mad bis mark in the 6J as a highly political previaWBt and because of his politic he reportedly tost many potential endowment gifts to the college. Giamatti, the English professor, seems far mora of pragmatist, perhaps as much a sign of his day as of his personality. He is also mors or less apolitical and Is registered, he tsys, as sn independent Clearly he is not nor does he plan to be passive, peripheral or voyeuristic ss president of Ysle.

For one thing, he's got too much to do. Like worry about money. "IN 15 YEARS," he says, "Ysle will be mora expensive, there will be 1 million fewer 18-yssr-olds, the capacity to place PhDs will be rsrer, the young faculty ia increasingly in despair. But we cannot retreat into a siege mentality," But he does say that because tuitions art rising at the same rate as inflation and tha professors' salaries are not, because the cost of heating the dormitories and classrooms is now exorbitant and continues to climb, there will hsve to be cuts in certain programs. What cuts, he doesn't know yet "First," he says, "I have to find out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing." Interior light Signal light Lock and key helps you find lets you know add security to food items fast.

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