Daddy died on a Thursday, the fifth day of July, a day after which he always proclaimed as the hottest day of the year. He was pulling a mess of corn. For those of you who don’t know what a mess is, it is just a little bit more than you need. In his last words to me and possibly the last words he ever spoke, he said “ I better go on. It might rain.” He was going to Joe Hilbun’s corn field to pull a dozen ears for me and three dozen ears for my brother Henry, whom I was going to visit at his home in South Carolina the next day. He stayed in the field for over an hour with the July sun heating the air upward toward one hundred degrees. He pulled an extra fifty ears or so, just in case someone needed them. Daddy loved giving away the bounty of the land. I think he felt that it was one of the reasons that God put him on this Earth. He made it back to his house at his farm on the Old Savannah Road. He carefully placed the bounty in blue plastic Walmart bags in the floor board of his Ford pickup. He went inside, pulled his coveralls off, and sat down in a chair to rest. His last act of kindness, his last act of giving, his last act of love done, God called him home to rest.
Henry Dale Thompson was born in 1923 in Emanuel County on the old Carl Gillis, Sr. place off Highway 80, just beyond the bend after the highway crosses the Ohoopee River going toward Swainsboro. I will always call him “Daddy.” His friends and clients called him Dale, Mr. Dale, or Colonel Thompson. His schoolmates called him “Fireball”and other less flattering names. His name should have been “Dole,” an error on his mother’s part in reading my grandfather’s letter. My grandfather, Henry Thompson, was away from home when Daddy was born, working to make a living for his wife, the former Miss Claudie Mae Braswell. Times were hard in the late twenties and early thirties, so Daddy and his family moved to Central Florida where his parents could make a living working for the railroad and the fruit company respectively. With a sufficient sum of money in hand, the Thompsons returned to Emanuel County, where my grandfather bought the store of Mr. Gillis at Captain James’ well just past the river bridge next to the Nazarene Campground. The family lived over the store for a few years until Dale, his father, friends, and family built a two bedroom home on the Meeks Road behind the store.
It was in these sleepy communities of Adrian, Scott, Meeks, and Norristown that Daddy’s life was shaped - friendships which would last seven decades began in the “good old days” of the 1930s. Daddy’s first public service came with his work with the CCC crews in and around Adrian. He was a leader in the Agricultural and Industrial Arts clubs at Adrian High School. Daddy loved to play baseball and basketball. Some of his fondest moments came on the ball field with cousins Jack Key, Billy Key, and Verlon Watson (Most of the team were related to each other).
Daddy was vice president of his Adrian High School Class of 1940. In the fall of 1940, he entered college at Georgia Teacher’s College at Statesboro. Adrian High School never had a football team, but that didn’t stop Daddy. Although he wasn’t a big man, Daddy played in the middle of Coach B.L. “Crook” Smith’s offensive line.
Daddy played in the last game of the last season of football at Teacher’s College. War came in 1941, and football was over. Georgia Teacher’s College became Georgia Southern University. Four decades after the last football game, the first intra squad football game of Georgia Southern was played at the Shamrock Bowl in Dublin, just across the woods of Sandy Ford Creek and within earshot of Daddy’s home. It was at Teacher’s College where Daddy met a whole new set of friends, including J.W. Zetterower and Thomas Curry, who in a friendly act of hazing, helped shave Daddy’s head, except for a “T” shaped patch of hair which was left on his bald head.
Daddy wanted to fly airplanes in the service of his country. When the war started, he was working at Union Bag in Savannah. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in hopes of being a naval pilot. A swift kick in his nose in a soccer match messed up his balance and ended any hopes of flying. He transferred to the regular navy as a Seaman First Class. Daddy never talked too much about the war. He loved to talk about the good times. Following the death of his cousin Felix Powell a few years ago, Daddy told me something he had told no one in over fifty years. Powell had been taken prisoner by the Japanese during the war. While his ship, the LCS 66, was off the coast of Okinawa, rumors began to circulate among the crew that there were Americans on the island. It was possible that Felix was there. Daddy’s captain gave him and a buddy permission to go on to the island and look for him. Something came up and Daddy never undertook the mission to find Felix, who was on the Japanese mainland at the time. Daddy was a Twin 40 gunner. His flotilla, Flotilla, shot down more than one thousand Kamikazes. He took no pride in that statistic, but after fifty six years he still felt the pain the Kamikazes inflicted on his friends.
After the war was over, Daddy got another chance to fly. He trained at Corpus Christi Naval Air Station until he was accepted for admission to Mercer Law School.
At Mercer, Daddy found a new set a friends: Griffin Bell, former Attorney General of the United States; Buck Melton, former Mayor of Macon, and a host of Superior Court judges, including Dub Douglas of Dublin. It was at Mercer where Daddy found his best friend, my mother, Jane Scott, who was the secretary to the Dean. Many of his fellow students indicted him for dating my mother so that he could get a better grade in his classes. Daddy always said, “All I ever wanted to do was to practice law in Dublin, Georgia.” On September 1, 1949, Daddy’s dream came true. He opened his office in the Hicks building across from the courthouse. A week before Christmas, he married my mother. Their first home was an apartment on Ramsey Street. A common misconception is that all lawyers are rich. Mama and Daddy had no car. They had to walk to work, to church, and to the grocery store.
Hamburgers and sandwiches were their daily diet. If Daddy took in one hundred and fifty dollars in a week, it was a good week.
From the very beginning of his legal career in Dublin, Daddy began a career of serving the public. He saw a duty in the practice of law - a duty to serve people. Daddy became actively involved in the American Legion, serving as a baseball coach, Commander of the local Post No. 17, a district officer, and a state officer. Daddy fought hard to build a county hospital in Dublin. He was an ardent supporter of the VA Hospital and veterans in general. He once turned down an offer to serve in a high position in the Georgia National Guard in favoring of remaining in Dublin. Two decades later he turned down a position as a Federal Court judge which was offered to him by his former classmate, Griffin Bell. You know about his nearly forty years of free service to the Development Authority, the five hundred or so Sunday school lessons gave, and all the favors and gifts to his friends. You might not have known that he represented the last Laurens County man to be executed in the electric chair.
It was years later when I learned that it was he who was playing Santa Claus at our church Christmas Party. I always wondered why he had to work on those nights.
Daddy didn’t count his bank accounts as his most precious asset. He had money, but it was there in case a member of our family needed it. My favorite philosopher, Sir Winston Churchill, characterized what my father was all about when he said,” We make our living by what we earn. We make our lives by what we give.”
That is lesson which we all should live by. Over the last half century Daddy came to know a whole new and much larger set of friends. He had friends. He counted them by the thousands. They were his greatest assets. One of those friends asked me, “Mr. Dale gave and gave and never got anything in return,” to which I disagree.
His friends were always there when he needed them. Even after his death, they were there, just when my family needed them most. They will always be there until the last one is gone.
Daddy’s life in Laurens County was a lesson, a lesson which we have seen over and over again in our past. Simply stated the reason is that “If you serve your community, your community will serve you.” My most precious inheritance is his love and respect for those people who came before us, balanced with his need to serve others to improve this world for those who will come after us. Daddy knew that the most important part of our county’s heritage is the friendships we have made, and the most important part of our future are the new friends, the ones we haven’t met yet.
P.S. Daddy, when you finish working the cross word puzzle today, please read my column, I just wanted to say, I love you and on the day I see you at the farm again, please pull a few ears for me, not the sweet white kind, but my favorite, the yellow ones, the ones that are almost too hard to eat. A mess of peas would be nice too!
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