The story behind the success of Air Force Maj. Gen. Everett Thomas is a familiar one in American history.
A young man grows up on a farm, doesn’t want to stay his whole life and so uses the work ethic he learns there to take him somewhere else.
In Thomas’ case, the beginning came in the tiny Leflore County community of Swiftown, and the destination has stretched as far away as Saturn.
“I had a lot of motivations as a kid. I lived on a farm, and there was work to be done. My mother said, ‘Don’t work; don’t eat.’ It was a simple thing for me,” he says. “Work in her mind was to go to school and get an education. She wanted to us to be better than what she had and what our father had.”
Now a two-star general — one of only 104 of that rank in the Air Force — Thomas returned to his alma mater at Leflore County High School Friday with the message to students that, “I am you.”
He graduated in 1976, part of a group of about six driven students who have become, among other things, a dentist, engineer, pharmacist and doctor of education.
Thomas’ path took him first to hometown Mississippi Valley State University. Motivated by the tear streaming down Iron Eyes Cody’s cheek over pollution, he wanted to be an environmentalist and signed up for Valley’s new environmental science program.
He joined the Air Force ROTC program, and one spring someone asked him what he was doing over the summer.
“I’m going home to work on the farm,” Thomas said.
“He said, ‘Would you rather be doing anything else?’”
“I said, ‘Yep.’”
Thomas ended up at an Air Force summer camp in Abilene, Texas.
“I fell in love with this thing called the Air Force, and I fell in love with it because of the discipline that my mother and my family had already instilled in me.”
He decided from there he could do both of his dreams, environmentalism and the military. He got his degree in environmental science from Valley in 1980 and then a master’s degree in industrial safety.
That led to a job in the Air Force launching satellites because of his expertise.
He worked on the $3.4 billion Cassini spacecraft mission, which left earth in 1997. The mission includes a Saturn orbiter and a probe that landed on the Saturn moon of Titan in 2005.
Thomas also served on a delegation, picked by the president, that made strategic arms reduction talks in Switzerland and Russia. He found Russians eager to discuss American history with a U.S. citizen, especially the American Revolution. Thomas said he turned the tables and talked European history about how Louis XVI sent French ships to aid the Americans against the British.
“It was silence in the room. They didn’t think an American could talk European history. I learned that right here at Leflore County High School,” he said.
He’s now vice commander of the Global Strike Command at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, La., which is in charge of the nation’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range bombers.
Thomas’ mother and wife were in attendance Friday, and he greeted former teachers, coaches and classmates. The general, who had an easygoing attitude that related well to the students, encouraged teachers and parents not to give up on students, saying they’ll surprise you when you least expect.
Students had a chance to ask Thomas questions, and several used the opportunity to lament having to pass state exams before graduating even though they completed all course requirements.
Thomas didn’t buy it.
“You’ve got to pass to graduate. The credibility of getting a diploma is that you fulfill all of the requirements,” he said. “There’s one other unspoken thing about getting a diploma: It means you had the discipline to stick to it.”
• Contact Charlie Smith at 581-7235 or csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.
