“One Lucky Boy”: Becoming A Pilot, A Businessman, And An “Exhibitionist”

Jon Thompson and his older twin brother were born in September 1938, and grew up in Canyon City, Colorado. They had two sisters who were 16 and 18 years older. Jon’s father was born in 1896 and enlisted to serve in France during WWI as a stretcher bearer. After the war, he became a prison guard in Colorado. Jon’s mom was born in 1902 and lived to be 92 years old. When the twins were six, their father died, leaving his wife to raise the family, assisted by the two older sisters. Jon’s brother later worked for Martin Marietta in Denver. During World War II, his sisters worked at Camp Carson, Colorado, and one married an Army officer who was later stationed at Ft. Campbell, Kentucky, following the Korean War. Jon also worked for Martin Marietta as a draftsman for a year before entering West Point. As a boy, he enjoyed sports. He was 6’4” and played center on the basketball team, and first base and left field on the baseball team. He also played football for a few years. He was very involved in his high school, being part of the Athletic Club and serving as the president of his class and the student council. He completed three years of JROTC in high school. He was able to enlist in the Army and serve on Active Duty for 6 months with a five-year commitment to the Army Reserves. In 1957, he completed Basic Training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. After high school, he attended New Mexico State for one year, and he attended Brigham Young University in Utah (he had earlier become Mormon for a girl). He became interested in military academies after two high school friends started at the Naval Academy. Influenced by his sister’s husband, who was serving at Ft. Campbell, he applied to West Point. He remembers traveling to New York on a bus. During Beast, he felt that Basic Training had prepared him well, but discipline was more strict at West Point, and there was “lots of marching.” Barry McCaffrey was Jon’s plebe squad leader and even though he was tough, Jon learned a lot from him. When MacArthur gave his speech in the Mess Hall, Jon was sitting near the front and remembers it as “the greatest experience of my whole life.” Training at Camp Buckner during his Yearling summer was “more like real training,” and he enjoyed the exposure to the combat arms branches. One summer he traveled to Germany and trained with an engineering company, which was a great overseas experience. During the summer before his first-class year, he traveled to a bunch of different posts for more exposure to the various branches. He did well academically and loved engineering and math classes. His JROTC and Army experiences helped him, and Jon commanded 2nd Battalion, 2nd Regiment as a Firstie. He was in shape, so he did well physically at the Academy. Jon was involved in a variety of activities including Class Committee, Public Information Detail, Public Relations Council, Debate Council and Forum, Rocket Club, Spanish Language Club, Sky Diving, Outdoor Sportsman Club, Mormon Chapel Squad, and Ski Club, and he was the Class Treasurer. He remembers a Colonel from the History Department leading the Mormon community and they met in the basement of the Cadet Chapel. He roomed with Bob Jones, and considers him his best roommate and best friend. He vividly remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Having worked as a draftsman on missiles at Martin Marietta before attending West Point, this was especially interesting to him. He also recalls marching in Kennedy’s funeral parade as well as MacArthur’s. He discusses some of his mentors, including Eisenhower (years later, he got to hold the note Eisenhower had prepared in case the Normandy invasion failed), William Westmoreland (his Superintendent who later recommended him for a scholarship), and Norman Schwartzkopf (who was one of his instructors). He selected Artillery as a branch, hoping to get an Air Defense slot in San Francisco, and planning on going to flight school to serve as an airborne forward observer. This was before Aviation was a branch. Pilots came from a variety of branches and following flight school, they completed aviation assignments but retained their basic branch. At a time when most of his classmates did not get to attend their basic course, Air Defense Officers who were slotted to nuclear assignments had to attend a school. He also completed Ranger and Airborne schools. His first assignment was B Battery, 2nd Battalion, 51st Air Defense Artillery in the San Francisco Bay Area in Sausalito. Seven Air Defense Batteries (3 Active Duty and 4 National Guard) ringed San Francisco. A Battery consisted of a Launch Platoon and a Radar Platoon. Jon was a Radar Platoon Leader, whose job was to scan for Soviet bombers. He had a great relationship with his Platoon Sergeant and his Soldiers. His radar supported the Nike Ajax, a surface to air missile with a range of 25 miles, capable of reaching Mach 2.3. Later these were replaced by the Nike Hercules, a nuclear capable surface to air missile with a range of 87 miles and a speed of Mach 3.5. After his time with the Ajax battery, he spent about 10 months completing fixed wing flight school at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. His greatest challenge in flight school was instrument training and flying at night. He then deployed to Vietnam, where he initially served with the 21st Reconnaissance Airplane Company, the “Black Aces,” in Chu Lai flying the O-1 Bird Dog. He then transferred to the 54th Aviation Company in Vung Tau, where he primarily flew the Otter, a small Canadian-built supply plane. He really enjoyed flying the Bird Dog and serving as an aerial forward observer, calling for fires from both artillery units and jets. Another mission was spotting North Vietnamese troops coming down the Ho Chi Minh trail. He recalls, “We knew we were doing an important job.” On one mission, he picked up a Marine Corps Captain and flew him around. Years later he ran into that former Marine Captain in Memphis and developed a close friendship with Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx. During his routine flying duties he regularly flew through misty clouds of defoliant being sprayed on South Vietnam to deny the enemy concealment from the jungle foliage. He recalls coming back from missions with his Bird Dog coated with moisture and his flight suit soaked from the chemicals. Years later, he developed prostate cancer, esophageal cancer, and cancer of the back and hip. When he was flying the U-1A Otter out of Vung Tau, he routinely delivered supplies and equipment to seven different sites, including flying to Thailand. The Tet Offensive occurred when he was in Vung Tau, and he remembers “things getting worse,” and flying “a lot of missions.” He took R&R to Hong Kong and describes it as a wonderful city. Following his tour in Vietnam, in 1969 he was assigned to the Headquarters for the 3rd Infantry Division in Kissingen, Germany. He had already been accepted to grad school, but had 9 months before reporting to school, and he spent that time flying VIPs around Germany in U-6A Beavers. Following his assignment in Germany, he earned a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas, Austin in 1971. He received a $2500 fellowship from the Daedalian Foundation and his nomination was supported by Westmoreland. While attending UT, he met his wife Susan at the mailbox in their singles apartment. In 1972, he and his new wife reported to the Air Defense School at Ft. Bliss before he took command of B Battery, 1st Battalion, 61st Air Defense Artillery at Travis Air Force Base. This was a Nike Hercules battery, and he had a great First Sergeant and great troops. His battery was rated the Best Active Duty Air Defense Battery in the Army. During this time his family was growing; his first daughter was born in 1972 at Travis Air Force Base, and his second daughter was born in 1974 in Memphis. In 1973, he left the Army as a Captain and entered the business world. He started with Taylor Machine Company, a Caterpillar distribution company. In 1983, he assumed ownership of that company, before becoming the President and CEO of Columbine Holdings from 1987 to 2001. Taylor Machine Company had been his wife’s grandfather’s company. John Radford Taylor started a wheat harvesting company, eventually transitioning from horses to Caterpillar equipment. At that time, Caterpillar required their distributors to have a succession plan that went to a male heir. The Taylors had no male heirs, but they did have a son-in-law, and Jon stepped into the position. He started as the credit manager, transitioned to parts and service manager, and eventually became the owner. In business, he used lessons learned from the Army and took care of his 375 employees like he took care of his troops. His equipment was used to dig a canal from the Tennessee River to Mobile, saving shippers the time of bringing cargo down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Jon also became involved in selling pipeline equipment around the world. In addition to his work in the business world, he remained involved with the Military through the Defense Orientation Conference Association (DOCA). DOCA was started in 1952 for American citizens to better understand the military’s needs. Through DOCA he has taken a number of personally-funded trips around the world to better understand the US’s involvement in global affairs. (The following list is in order of importance to Jon, not necessarily in chronological order.) He attended the 40th Anniversary celebration of D-Day with President Reagan and sat in the stand next to Eisenhower’s son at Pointe-du-Hoc. On June 2, 1989, he was in Tiananmen Square, the DAY BEFORE the student protest. He saw the students on hunger strike, and reviewed the Chinese troops. One student handed him a banner that proclaimed “Without Liberty, I will surely die.” Jon managed to bring it home, but he later destroyed it (listen for that story). In 1997, he traveled to Vietnam for briefings on the POW / MIA situation, and he spent time in both Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and Hanoi, even visiting Hỏa Lò Prison, where his roommate Bob Jones had been held. In 2017, he visited Panmunjom on the 38th Parallel, where the Armistice stopping the Korean War was signed. As an aside, he mentions that Fred Smith’s daughters work in the movie business and produced the 2022 movie “Devotion” about two Navy fighter pilots during the Korean War, Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors) and Tom Hudner (Glen Powell). Brown was the first African-American naval aviator. In 1988, he flew into a Contra Base Camp in the Yamales Valley in Honduras along the Nicaraguan border. This trip was to a war zone, but Jon remarks it was “fairly safe.” He also visited Gdansk, Poland, in 1988 and met with Lech Walesa in support of Solidarity. In 2007, he traveled to northern Iraq with the Brinkley Task Force, met with the Peshmerga, and traveled around the city of Erbil, the oldest continuously occupied city in the world. In 1990 he met with President Vaclav Havel and attended a reception with Ambassador Shirley Temple Black in the Czech Republic. He visited Guantanamo Bay in 1983 as part of the Joint Chief’s Orientation Conference and roomed with Herman Wouk on the aircraft carrier America. In 1980, his scheduled trip to Riyadh was diverted to Cairo and Israel because of the failed Iranian Hostage rescue attempt, Operation Eagle Claw. The group ended up spending a week in Israel. Interestingly, classmate Buddy Bucha was running a company doing business in Iran, funded by Ross Perot. He visited Chile in 1998 when Pinochet turned over the government to the people. All of these trips allowed American business leaders to build bonds and interact with the people and leaders in the countries they visited. From 1992 to 1997, Jon served as the Director of Cultural Affairs in Memphis. He was responsible for bringing cultural exhibits to the city and arranging for five other cities to agree to host the exhibits in their cities as well. Two of his favorite exhibits were the Titanic Exhibition and the Napoleon Exhibition. Titanic has been viewed by over 132 million visitors and is currently in China, and the Napoleon Exhibition followed an exhibition about Catherine the Great. For all of his exhibitions, he enjoyed hand selecting the items for display and negotiating with the owners to get them. He is friends with Tom Detweiller, the ocean explorer who discovered Titanic on Robert Ballard’s vessel. He also was friends with Paul-Hanri Nargeolet, a French explorer who died on the Titan submersible. Jon has even had the opportunity to descend to the Titanic, diving in Russian submarine MIR II. His Napoleon exhibit highlighted the 1812 carriage Napoleon campaigned in during his invasion of Russia, and Napoleon’s cradle and death mask, but the highlight of the exhibit was the cannon-ball-pierced breastplate worn by Francois Antoine-Fauveau when he was killed at Waterloo. His current project is finding Amelia Earhart’s plane, which disappeared on July 2, 1937, during the flight from Lae, New Guinea, to Howland Island. Jon speculates that an accident on takeoff from Hawaii at the start of her voyage damaged her compass. It was never fixed, resulting in a 2o north error, which can be seen in her flight to North Africa. His team has spent six months at sea covering an area around Howland Island the size of Connecticut. He believes her plane is in about 18,000 feet of water in some “really rough terrain.” Jon also spent 28 years serving as a Commissioner for the Memphis International Airport, helping to build an 11,120 foot runway (18C/36C) and a new terminal for the Tennessee Air National Guard. The Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority (MSCAA) World Class Tour Program, which educates people on the benefits of the airport, is named in his honor. Jon remains involved in a number of societies and organizations, including the Daedalians and the Quiet Birdmen, which were organized by WWI and WWII pilots to educate people about the importance of aviation. He is also the head of the Army / Navy League in Memphis. He is most proud of his service to the nation, having gotten involved in DOCA to be “able to contribute all over the world.” Reflecting on the Military Academy he states, “West Point is the heart of my soul.”