98-year-old recalls happy life, success

By SHAIYLA HAKEEM

He earned an engineering degree from Youngstown College in 1934.

Six major wars, the great depression, assassinations and 18 U.S. presidents are just a few of historical events that 98-year-old Edwin Thompson has experienced. Youngstown, as well as the rest of the country, is a completely different world than the one Thompson grew up in.

Nov. 11, 1918, was the end of World War I. Most can only read about how the war ended, not give a personal account.

“All of a sudden, I heard the whistles blowing and the bells ringing,” explains Thompson. “I said to my dad, that must mean the war is over!”

Aside from being alive during some of America’s most famous battles, Thompson lived in an era where work and transportation had a different meaning. Many complain about their pay rate and rising gas prices, but Thompson’s first job was delivering milk at $1 a day for the former R.J. Kirk of Youngstown. Gas wasn’t an issue because they traveled by horse and carriage.

“He would pick me up at about 3 o’clock in the morning, I would run the milk in and pick up the empty bottles,” says Thompson. “Then we would stop out on Market Street and have pancakes and sausage!”

Higher education was important to Thompson, who obtained a degree in engineering and drawing from the original Youngstown College in 1934. The campus of Youngstown College, now Youngstown State University, has undergone drastic changes over the decades since Thompson attended.

According to Thompson, he is the oldest living graduate of Youngstown College.

“I graduated from Youngstown College in 1934. There was only one building then, Jones Hall,” says Thompson. “There were only 69 people in my graduating class.”

This may be somewhat hard to imagine compared with the YSU campus population that increases each year. The historic Jones Hall was built in 1931 and used as the college’s main building. It no longer is used for college classes but houses YSU records and departments pertaining to finances and payroll.

Along with the many jobs and a college degree, Thompson has been a member of several community and professional organizations, such as the Rotary Club of Canfield, Mahoning Valley Society of Professional Engineering, Sigma Delta Beta and Phi Sigma Kappa. He has been a Shrine Mason for more than 67 years. Thompson has collected lapel pins for each organization to which he has belonged as well as pins that represent political involvement and time eras. Altogether, he has more than 55 pins.

Ellen Douglas, an employee of Home Instead Senior Living, a national organization that specializes in home care for the senior citizens who choose to live at home, has been working with Thompson since September and doesn’t view it as a job, but as a cause that she believes in and a chance to make new friends.

She is inspired by Thompson’s life and believes that the only differences between those old and young are the outside appearance and modern advances. Though Thompson came from a generation without the technological advances of today, he enjoys modern marvels.

“Every day when I come in, he will find an interesting story and read it to me from a magazine and then I will go online and find the video,” says Douglas. “I tell him, this is the world … we can go anywhere you want to go!”

Thompson lost the love of his life, Katherine, better known as Kitten, late last year. They met in 1936 and had been together ever since; it was love at first sight. He described Kitten as being a good wife, kindhearted and an animal lover. The two would have been married 74 years in May. Kitten would have turned 95 today. Together, they parented four children and had 15 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. When the time comes, Thompson plans to be cremated, as his wife, and his ashes mixed with hers and spread upon his lake behind his home.