Chickasaw Hall of Fame member and Army veteran Gene Nashoba Thompson has a philosophy whose ingredients reflect his faith and, if followed, form a recipe for an easy and enjoyable life.
“God gives us a very straightforward priority in life,” Thompson said. “He’s number one, our spouse is number two, our children are three, our parents are next, followed by our extended family and the community. Self is last.
“I don’t think you’ll meet a human being who has been more blessed than I have been,” Thompson said. “I was blessed from birth because I was born into a Christian Chickasaw family, and I had both my culture and my religion firmly planted.”
Thompson admits he did not always act the part of a saint, but despite his occasional missteps, he sensed a guiding hand.
“I was just as wild as the next person, but God took care of me in spite of me and blessed me supernaturally time after time after time,” he said.
Thompson’s military experience started in 1954 at age 16 when he joined the Oklahoma National Guard with the help of his parents who had to sign for him. His first assignment was not glamorous.
“I was thrown in the back of a ‘deuce and a half truck’ with a bunch of luggage, and as soon as I got out, they pointed to the mess hall and a grease trap that had not been cleaned in a year.” His job was to clean it.
“But I was proud to be a soldier. It was good, and I learned a lot. We all wanted to serve. We never thought about not serving. Everybody served,” he said.
Thompson’s original dream was to become a rancher, but a junior high science fair project proved predictive of the direction his work would eventually take in the field of entomology, or the study of insects.
“I made a life-sized steer, and a meat packing house gave me an esophagus with a screwworm still crawling up his esophagus. I had stages pinned on a poster giving the background on how much damage screwworms were causing to the cattle business. I won first place,” he said.
As a member of Future Farmers of America, he won first prize in a state judging division in which participants were challenged to identify insects and describe their economic impact on agriculture.
Thompson was his high school’s photographer and had lined up a job with The Daily Oklahoman upon graduation. A teacher who saw more in him than he saw in himself insisted he apply for a scholarship, forget about being a newspaper photographer and attend a college.
“I was one of 13 selected to receive the scholarship and got enough money for books and tuition,” he said.
Thompson attended Cameron College, now Cameron University, in Lawton, Oklahoma, where his uncle was a professor.
“I worked in the cafeteria. I shuffled around laundry for the locals and just did odd jobs for my room and board,” he said.
His uncle talked him out of becoming a rancher, told him a better future was available in entomology and encouraged him to take a test being offered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
“They were getting ready to hire the first student-trainees in entomology and were conducting a nationwide test,” he said.
His uncle told him he would not pass the test, but it would be a good experience, and it would set him up for future success with the USDA, the largest employer of agricultural entomologists.
He was one of 13 to pass the test out of 1,500 people across the country who took it.
“It was one of those God things,” he said. “That got me in as a GS-1 with the USDA. Every year they promoted me to the next grade. I had a guaranteed job when I was out of school. With my National Guard pay and the department of agriculture pay, I was getting the best salary of almost any other student worker.”
Thompson would go on to earn his degree in entomology at Oklahoma State University (OSU). Later still, he earned his master’s degree at OSU while in the Army.
The USDA assigned him to a small grain laboratory at the University of Nebraska in which all lab professionals were given faculty status in the entomology department.
“Wonderful people, loved the place, but they had 102 consecutive days of snow and ice up there,” he said.
He became aware of the Armed Forces Pest Control Board, which recommends policy, procedure and offers guidance on matters related to pest management. “I didn’t realize there were entomologists in all the armed services,” he said. He was eventually appointed its head.
“Both the Army and the Air Force offered me a direct commission,” he said. “I had been in the Army National Guard, so I knew something about the Army.”
Thompson was commissioned in 1960 and was promised an assignment in the much warmer climate of Fort Stewart, Georgia. That changed while he was in basic officer training when the Army decided to send him to South Korea, which he chalks up to God displaying his sense of humor.
“They call that place the Frozen Chosen for a reason. I thought, you know God really has a good sense of humor. He’s done me in.”
Jokes aside, the experience gave him a deeper sense of mission and helped solidify his commitment to the Army.
“We had an epidemic of Japanese B encephalitis over there that killed 5,000 Koreans and not one of them died in my area. We also had malaria over there. The preventive medicine team could go into villages and give them portable water and soap and told them how to use it. It cut the infant death rate in half overnight. It was just amazing.
“I had cases in areas I was responsible for providing protection against arthropod-borne and other infectious diseases and didn’t lose a single person to a major disease,” he said.
Following his experiences in South Korea, he decided to make a career in the Army.
His second assignment was at the original Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
"There I worked on malaria and eastern encephalitis and colonizing a foundational colony of the malarial vector Anopheles stephensi (mosquito),” he said.
The purpose of colonizing the mosquitoes was so they could be used as a model in malaria research. “It was being used in all the world except the United States. We didn’t have any colonies, so they asked me to take some eggs from a European source and develop a foundational colony,” Thompson said.
“This was another God thing,” he said. “They called me one day and asked if I wanted to go to school. I got to go back to Oklahoma State as a lieutenant to get my master’s degree.”
Upon earning his master’s degree in medical entomology, Thompson was assigned to the medical training center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. There, he instructed doctors, veterinarians, nurses and enlisted preventive medicine technicians who were being deployed to Southeast Asia the basics of tropical medicine and insect borne diseases.
Thompson later became the first entomologist assigned to the office of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the first one assigned to the office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense. Added to his responsibilities was renaming the Armed Forces Pest Control Board and rewriting the DOD directive that outlined the unit’s responsibilities.
Thompson was ordered to investigate and prevent pervasive insect infestation in military food rations. Company officials who had been contracted with the military to produce the rations defended their process with studies they had performed purporting to demonstrate the soundness of their packaging.
Thompson examined the studies and found they were often contradictory.
Over the protestations of the supplying company, the solution lay in changing to a polymer combination packaging process that resists insects.
“Today’s rations are well-protected,” he said.
Thompson was promoted to lieutenant colonel and colonel before retiring in 1983.
Thompson said his father instilled in him that there was nothing out of the ordinary about him, but that did not mean he was limited in his ability to achieve.
“My dad said don’t be afraid to make your mark. There is always a way to go over, go under or go around either side of any obstacle. There are many ways to get to your objective, so don’t give up, if you’re right. But be sure you’re right before you take it on.”
At 88 years of age, Gene Thompson still holds true to that advice.