Early Life
Paul Thomson was born on June 29, 1916, in India to parents, Clinton and Bertha Mangon Thomson. His mother was a doctor who ran a local Indian hospital while his father was a minister. Tragedy struck the family when Thomson was hunting with his father when he was 11 years old. His father had shot two ducks for the family's Christmas dinner, but drowned while trying to retrieve them from a lake.
Thomson, his mother and his four younger sisters returned to the United States following his father's death. The family settled in his parents' native Nebraska, where his mother set up a medical practice. Thomson raised chickens, churned butter and grew potatoes during the Great Depression to earn money for his family. Thomson graduated from high school in 1934 and enrolled in Nebraska Wesleyan University for two years, but dropped out in 1937 due to unaffordable tuition costs. Following his departure from NWU, he briefly worked as an installer of telegraph lines for Western Union and early railroad-signal control systems in Colorado. He also worked as a wheat and turkey farmer for a short period of time.
Thomson enlisted in the United States Marines in 1938, a year after dropping out of college. He served as a chemical warfare instructor during World War II. He later ran a U.S. military sawmill to produce lumber for military operations in Korea during the Korean War. Another of his assignments in Korea was to monitor horticultural operations, which would lead to a lifelong interest in plants. The Marines stationed him at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego during the 1950s, which brought Thomson to Southern California. One of his duties in San Diego was working in the base's nursery.
Read more about this topic: Paul Thomson (botanist)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds and cottage lights. For my own part, but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug Harbor.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)