Profile of John Thomson

8/12/05

 

PROFILE

 

John Thomson likes to sum up his early life by saying that he spent 17 and one-half years in                  12  different prisons in seven different states.
He often repeats the story of the time a judge told him there was no

reasonable probability that he would ever live freely without violating the

law.

Just as lucidly he

can pinpoint when he first made the decision to defy the judge’s prediction and

change from his criminal lifestyle.

It is clear from

the way anecdotes come rolling so easily from Thomson’s lips, as if they were

legends told to school-children, that he has told his story many times. 

Thomson is now

drawing from his experiences to spearhead an effort in Evanston

to bring attention to offenders who are reentering Illinois communities at record rates: 30,000

to 40,000 are expected to leave prison this year.  When Gov. Rod Blagojevich created a statewide

taskforce in January to study how to support returning offenders and decrease

repeat offenders, which included holding public hearings in Illinois

communities, Thomson made sure one was held in Evanston.

Thomson, 60, with

a deep baritone voice, is making sure the issues stay at the forefront in Evanston by creating a

committee of leaders in the social services community.  They had their first meeting on Wednesday

night.

“Five years ago,

reentry of prisoners was not on anyone’s radar screen as an important issue,”

Thomson said, whose last stint in the penitentiary was 27 years ago for an

armed bank robbery.  “Not until various

states looked at stats, did they realize so many prisoners are coming back and

we have nothing for them [in the way of services].”

About 55 percent

of Illinois

prisoners released each year are back in prison within three years, according

to the taskforce mission statement.
According to Thomson, there are approximately 104 people living in Evanston on parole.

”Even if we only

do have 100 people on parole, those are 100 people that need services,” Thomson

said. 

It’s hard to

imagine that this affable father of three spent his formative years in prison.

But Thomson, who

was born on the south side of Chicago

in 1944, suffered an unstable childhood—an abusive father and an indifferent

mother—and stole his first car by the age of 13.  By the time he was 19, he had been through several

juvenile detention facilities.  After

stealing a car and driving it across state lines at 20 years-old, he was sent

to a string of prisons including the federal penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

“I didn’t care,”

Thomson said.  “I wasn’t thinking about

getting out.  No one was missing me out

there and I wasn’t missing anyone.  This

was my life.”

Thomson describes

the need to live in a constant “angry state,” in order to remain on guard and

survive in prison.  Charlotte Oda, who

has known Thomson since he joined the Reba

Place Church

in Evanston 27 years ago, recalls a time when he

first moved to Evanston.  When a friend’s child woke Thomson up from a

nap, he reacted like a fellow-prisoner was awakening him up with a knife to the

throat.

“He almost attacked

the child,” Oda said.  “He wasn’t used to

having friendly things happen.  With

everything he was a little on edge.”

Although this is

the first time he’s become so involved in prison reform, it’s not the first

time he’s taken a stab at public service.
In 1993, he ran for Evanston City Council and lost.  Thomson is open with his life story, but

still wary of how he is portrayed by the media.
He said while running for alderman, both the Chicago Tribune and the

Sun-Times wrote articles as if he’d “robbed banks last week.”

Thomson’s “life

change,” as he calls it, began at the age of 26 in 1970 when he was sentenced

to 12 years in prison for robbing a bank in St. Louis

and sent for observation in Springfield,
Missouri.

“I had resigned

myself to the fact that I’m going to live the rest of my life in prison,”

Thomson said.  “I’d given up the

fight.  Twenty-six is young to give up on

life.”

He credits

“accepting Jesus Christ” as the way he turned his life around.  His interest in religion was piqued after

meeting Mary Thomson in 1970, who was working as a teacher and at the prison’s

chapel.  They got married in 1980 after

Thomson was released and the two are now active members of the Reba Place
Church.

In the first

encounters with him, Mary Thomson says John was “not the chatty sort.” 

“He kept to

himself,” she said.  “He was stony-faced;

didn’t smile.  He didn’t interact

socially.” 

Now, John Thomson

describes himself as a “people person” and says he didn’t stick with his work

as a bookkeeper at Northwestern
University, a job he held

for three years following prison, because it was too solitary.  Since prison, Thomson has worked at a number

of jobs but considers himself a house-painter by trade. 

He credits prison

with giving him a high school diploma, some college courses, and teaching him

marketable skills like bookkeeping, and is concerned that these programs are no

longer available for prisoners.

This is just one

of the issues he hopes to address through the committee, which on Wednesday discussed

the possibility of becoming a City Council subcommittee if there is enough

interest.

“I was the energy

behind the hearing,” Thomson said.  “I

knew if we didn’t pull together an advisory committee, the momentum would have

stopped right there.”

Thomson said that

he never before got involved in prison reform issues because he wanted to

protect his children, all of whom attended high school in Evanston.
But a near-fatal heart attack three months ago made him realize that he

“needed to do something” to impact the community.

When asked how her

husband portrayed his stormy past to his children, Mary Thomson said that

John’s story has become so “interwoven in church as story of redemption, that

it was never hidden.”

Now, the Thomson’s

have a new story to add to their cannon of tales: How John Thomson began

advocating for prison reform issues.