Posted on 09/30/2007 10:46:53 AM PDT by Fractal Trader
LAWRENCEBURG, Tenn. - "Freddie! Freddie!" came the chant from nearly 3,000 people as towering Fred Thompson entered the final minutes of a pivotal game for his Lawrence County High School basketball team. Grabbing crucial rebounds, Thompson helped win the regional final.
It hardly mattered that the team didn't survive the 1959 state tournament. Next year, Freddie would be a full-time star.
But there would be no next year.
Just as Thompson turned 17, his girlfriend became pregnant, and he married her in a small, quickly arranged ceremony. The high school rules were clear: Married students did not play sports. It seemed Thompson's future was determined: a teenage marriage, no college education, and a career on the assembly line. Thompson had little hope of escaping Lawrenceburg - much less becoming a famous actor and US senator.
His friends had few expectations.
"He was a class cutup; he was a clown," said Jimmie Oliver, a teammate on Thompson's high school basketball team. "I think anybody you talk to would say he was the least likely person that you thought would succeed like he has. He basically didn't apply himself in school, didn't make good grades."
Yet Thompson's personal crisis wound up turning around his life and - in a twist that still stuns some of those who remember him as lackadaisical Freddie - put him on the path to being a contender for the Republican presidential nomination. The teenage wedding thrust Thompson, the son of a little-educated used-car dealer, into the middle of his wife's erudite family. Searching for a way forward, Thompson began to listen to his wife's grandfather, Pap.
Pap was a small-town lawyer with a patriarchal Southern manner. He also had one of the most unusual affiliations in town: He was a Republican.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
“It was a teen-age wedding and the old folks wished em’ well...”
Sounds like the stories they used to write about Bush.
thanks for posting
ping
Thompson's birthday is August 19th.
Imagine that, he married the girl and no abortion. Thompson took the responsibility and forgo being a star player. Even as a kid he displayed good character.
Chuck Norris can impregnate women just by staring at them - twins if he concentrates.
Please! For someone who's screen name includes a mathematical term you should be able to calculate how many years have passed since Thompson was 17. Go for it Einstein!
They never published these same stories on Albert Gore Junior but they could have since the statements were out there.
Isn’t that what erudite means?
LOL!!! That's small potatoes compared to Edwards, Kerry, Pelosi, Feinstein, and most of the Demoncrack leadership.
Thompson also managed the 1968 campaign of the local Republican nominee for Congress, even though there was little chance of winning in the heavily Democratic area. The highlight of the campaign for Thompson was a visit by a former movie star: California Governor Ronald Reagan. "I was backstage and Reagan had come in for several candidates in the area," Thompson recalled. "We sat there, got to talking, and he asked me my views on things. He said, 'I don't know your guy, but what do you think I ought to say about him?' And I said a few things and Reagan went out and said exactly what I told him. He had me there from then on . . . He paid attention to me as a young lawyer . . . of course I started following him more closely from a political standpoint."
This is interesting.
Pieces I found most relevant concerned the clash between the union strikers and management, how his close ties to Baker developed...in retrospect understandable since he was the major republican figure at a time when it was still heavily democratic, the views of the man (his wife's grandfather) that he responded to over his own family's FDR roots, how his campaign evolved to differ from the modern day campaign everyone lambasts him for not following....many interesting parts I haven't mentioned. His take on racial segregation at the time...
It's worth a read for an insight into how he thinks, the influences that forged him and his relationships, and some of his policy positions. That is...if someone is looking to learn more about Thompson rather then repeat talking points about his being lazy, old, and at death's door and a closet liberal to boot.
I just read the article and was amazed. It was a pretty good article, considering it came from a subsidiary of the New York Times. It was 9 pages long and seemed to be an honest look at Fred.
Thought you might want to see this.
Surprisingly, the article is positive. I’m sure Kranish, who’s a John Kerry devotee and biographer, started out looking for dirt, but couldn’t help writing what turns out to be a very warm portrait of Fred.
I like this part:
“Thompson and Alexander were given a target for 1970: defeat the incumbent Democratic US Senator Albert Gore Sr. Gore lost. ... In the span of four years Tennessee had gone from having had no Republican senators since Reconstruction to having both seats held by the GOP.”
C’est la vie, said the old folks.
It goes to show you never can tell.
Oliver continued: "Would you like fries with that?"
I believe he did the right thing. He married her.
Be all that as it may, Fred Senior probably got a kick the right direction, just at the right time and in the right place. His first wife's grandfather saw a lump of coal, put it under a little pressure, and voila!, the world was presented with a diamond in the rough.
Fred seems unmotivated? Depends on what you mean by "motivated". No flaming social reformer, he. But the term "righteous" is much closer to fitting (though perhaps not precisely correct either).
Too bad "Pap" never got to see the outcome of his early investment in Fred.
“It was 9 pages long and seemed to be an honest look at Fred.”
If you put it in print form it becomes one page.
It is an incredible story, Thompson even picked cotton, and was struggling with three jobs at one point, as a young husband and father.
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