This article is part of a series that highlights the lives and experiences of remarkable alums.
When the Big Game is held at Stanford, Helen Tombropoulos, ’50, hangs a sign in Greek in her Palo Alto home that reads “GO BEARS!”
Tombropoulos was born into a Greek family in Madera, in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Growing up, Greek history and art were never mentioned during her first twelve years in school. She said her parents could not understand how she had gone through almost twelve years of school without a mention of Greek history or art. ”How could you call that an education?”, they said. When she and her parents discovered that classical Greek history and art was offered at Cal, Helen enrolled in a summer session.
That summer, everything changed for Helen. She fell in love with Berkeley and applied to transfer from Fresno State. She was admitted in 1948. At Berkeley, she loved everything, from the excitement to the faculty.
She graduated at 20 years of age having majored in public law and government, and returned to Madera to take a temporary teaching position. Although she enjoyed teaching, she wanted something more and applied to Columbia’s master’s program in political science.
One day, while in New York, she spotted a newspaper advertisement for a position as secretary to the Foreign Minister of Iraq and the entire Iraqi delegation at the United Nations. Soon she found herself traveling the world. Amid the Korean and Vietnam wars, she typed speeches and attended meetings with delegates across political committees. While working at the United Nations, she had the chance to meet First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and even assisted in serving tea to Andrei Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor at the Stalin trials.
She returned to California seven years later and launched a thirty-five-year teaching career in high schools and junior colleges, and a stint at Tsinghua University in China.
In 1960, Helen was in attendance at San Francisco’s Cow Place to hear President John F. Kennedy’s stirring speech when he encouraged young volunteers to join the Peace Corps. Decades later that experience still inspired her, and in 1992 she answered the call. At age 62, she joined the Peace Corps and moved to Hungary to teach. On weekends, she spent time in her Budapest apartment editing papers for professors submitting work to American universities.
Later, she spent twenty-four years in Stanford’s Department of Statistics as program manager for the undergraduate Mathematics and Computer Science program. At the age of 88, she retired.
In a recent speech she gave at the Golden Bear Luncheon and 50th reunion, Tombropoulos reflected on how her time at UC Berkeley catapulted her into a life filled with remarkable experiences around the world.
Looking back on her early years, Helen described them as “an extraordinary beginning, impossible without Berkeley.” She recalled, “Berkeley was glorious. We had coach Pappy Waldorf revolutionizing Berkeley football. We had the Rose Bowl, the spirit, the crowds, the excitement. And above all, we had faculty that inspired me, and who stirred my love for history and politics.”
Tombropoulos’s daughter Rhea ultimately chose Harvard for college. Helen supported her decision wholeheartedly, offering reassurance that reflected her lifelong pride in Cal: “No matter where you go,” she told her, “your heart will always bleed blue and gold.
