Barbara Thompson

Funeral Alternatives of Washington - Tumwater

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Barbara Jean Thompson, who lived her dream of publishing a newspaper, raised four sons, and touched many with her kindness, generosity, and optimism, died October 22, 2016 of cancer at her home on Puget Sound near Olympia, Washington. She was 88. Her death came exactly two months after she and her husband, Alan Thompson, celebrated their 67th wedding anniversary. 

Barbara Jean Rowland was born March 4, 1928, in Farnam, Nebraska, a prairie town 190 miles west of Lincoln. Her pioneer ancestors homesteaded there two generations earlier. 

She was the second of three children. Her father taught in a one-room schoolhouse, drove an ambulance on the Western Front during World War I, and managed a community bank, keeping it afloat during the Great Depression as hundreds of other banks failed. Her mother, a nurse, cared for scores of dying patients in an Omaha hospital during the lethal Spanish Flu pandemic of 1919. 

Barbara met Alan at an event she emceed as president of a college women’s journalism society. Both were journalism students at the University of Nebraska. She wrote for the student newspaper, the Daily Nebraskan, and he, a World War II Navy veteran a year behind her in studies, wrote for the Lincoln Star. 

In her junior, year Barbara was junior-senior prom queen, carried to the dance on a litter borne by brawny male honor society members. She graduated in 1949. Her classmates included Johnny Carson, later host of television’s Tonight Show, and Ted Sorenson, later John F. Kennedy’s chief aide and speechwriter. 

The couple married August 22, 1949, in Farnam. After their wedding, they lived in San Francisco. Barbara worked for an advertising agency as Alan completed college at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 1950. 

They then moved east. In Nebraska, Barbara worked for a small newspaper, Alan worked for a radio station, then both worked for a telephone company. Later, in New York, Alan edited a corporate magazine. Rowland, the first of their four sons, was born in Tarrytown, New York, in 1955. The next year Alan’s employer transferred him to California and the Thompsons moved to the Bay Area. 

But Barbara and Alan dreamed of another life. They wanted to publish their own newspaper. 

In 1957, they realized their dream, purchasing the Wahkiakum County Eagle, a weekly in Cathlamet, Washington, a fishing and logging town on the Columbia River, 60 miles northwest of Portland, Oregon. 

Thrust into reporting local news and writing feature articles, the young couple soon befriended many residents. Their second son, Sam, was born in Longview in 1958. 

Their lives changed in 1960 when Julia Butler Hansen, Cathlamet resident and longtime state legislator, won election to Congress. She soon hired Alan as her legislative aide. The Thompsons sold the Eagle and again moved east, to a new home near Washington, DC. 

In 1961, the capital was energized by a charismatic young president, John F. Kennedy. Alan accompanied Hansen to Kennedy’s inauguration. There he heard the words crafted by Barbara’s college classmate, Ted Sorenson, “Ask not what your county can do for you . . .” James, the couple’s third son, was born in Washington, DC, later that year. 

Hansen, an energetic and adept politician, began a 14-year career in Congress. She eventually chaired a powerful House Appropriations subcommittee. 

In 1962, the Thompsons returned to Cathlamet to repossess the faltering Eagle. The next year, they moved again, to Castle Rock, Washington, a logging town 60 miles south of Olympia. Barbara and Alan had purchased another weekly, the Cowlitz County Advocate, published since 1886. 

They would publish the Advocate for three decades. All of their sons, including the fourth, Jonathan, born in Longview in 1968, worked at the family enterprise. The couple eventually resold the Eagle and established another weekly, the Lewis County News, in nearby Winlock, and the Sternwheeler, a regional shopper. 

And Alan pursued a second career. In 1964, Congresswoman Hansen urged her former aide to run for the state House of Representatives. He did, and in a race in which more than 20,000 votes were cast, defeated his incumbent opponent by 15 votes. Thus began a 27-year career in the state legislature: 17 years in the House, four years in the Senate, and six years as Chief Clerk of the House. 

Barbara will long be remembered for her unexpected wry rejoinders. One instance occurred at a dinner gathering of legislators she attended with Alan. Wine prompted triumphal toasts to political achievements, offered in sequence around the table. When her turn came, Barbara raised her glass to the hilarious stopper of “Here’s to reality.” 

Barbara was long active in civic affairs. In 1972, a Castle Rock women’s club named her woman of the year. She later served on boards of organizations aiding needy families, operating a home for troubled boys, and maintaining historic cemeteries. 

In 1987, Barbara was elected president of the Castle Rock chamber of commerce. In that role, she helped establish a visitor’s center promoting Castle Rock and recounting its history, including the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens and resulting mudflow that nearly swept over the town. 

Barbara and Alan sold their publications in 1990 and retired from journalism. Two years later, they moved to a house they designed at Boston Harbor, on Puget Sound near Olympia. Sadly, the Advocate, chronicle of Castle Rock news for generations, closed in 1999, 113 years after it first rolled off the press. 

Barbara is survived by her husband, Alan; her sister, Patricia; her brother, John, and his wife, Ardith; and numerous nieces and nephews. She is also survived by four sons, three daughters-in-law, and five grandchildren, all living in Olympia: Rowland, Amy and Claire Thompson; Sam Thompson; James Thompson, Megan Gillespie, Nicholas and Margaret Thompson; Jonathan, Rosalind, Owen and Drew Thompson. 

Please leave memories of Barbara or condolences for her family in the Guestbook below.

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Barbara Thompson Obituary | Altogether