but has
interesting side turns and byways. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I was the operations manager for the Tandem Mirror Experiment (TMX) at LLNL.
TMX was a very complicated and balky plasma physics experiment, bedeviled by complexity and occasional unfortunate
design compromises. As a result, the experimental physics team and their engineering support staff had reason for
frequent Friday excursions for beer and pizza, usually in that order of priority. On one occasion, as we were
wrapping up, I happened to remember that one of our number, Bear Hornady, an original CAMS staffer, was on
vacation in the tropics, due home any day. Somewhat overcome by fumes, I suggested that we decorate
his home with something tropical so he’d feel comfortable on return. This suggestion lead to the
pledge to go instantly to the hardware store and buy plastic flamingos, the most suitable (and cheapest)
object we could think of. We drove to town, pillaged the store and purchased their stock of birds.
We then drove to Bear’s house, put between 20 and 30 birds on the lawn, and pretty much forgot about it.
The birds (henceforth known as the flock) occasionally came out for appearances on others’ lawns
over the next few years until they mysteriously disappeared. Mary, my wife, has always been
suspect in this matter but confesses nothing.
The joke really took off in July of 1991, when I returned from my first inspection tour in
Iraq for the UN to find a flamingo wearing a burnoose perched on the CAMS sign outside the
office building. CAMS had been set up as a pretty independent and freewheeling group,
so the pursuit of evermore examples of the ultimate symbol of kitsch and bad taste
became obligatory. Today, postdocs and visitors come to CAMS with gifts of flamingo-inspired
clocks, dolls, wall hangings, garden ornaments, pillows, etc.
When I left LLNL to become the Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
acquiring what dignity I could as head of a combat support agency, I imagined that
the flamingos were a thing of my past. In the summer of 1999, I traveled 1000 km. east of
Moscow to visit the members of my agency who manned the inspection portal around the SS-20
plant at Votkinsk. When I got to their compound, I found what you see below. I don’t know
if my military crew had researched my past and the birds were there for me as a gag, or if
they just expressed the usual American desire for expressing the improbable and irreverent.
In either case, they were a welcome sight. I suppose CAMS is stuck with this symbol in any likely future.
Jay Davis, Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, standing in front of the
inspection portal located in Votkinsk, Russia, surrounded by a flock of flamingos.
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