Obit Draft Assignment

Lee A. Thomas, a Korean War veteran, skilled carpenter and chef who had been teaching and administrating for 25 years, died Saturday morning of natural causes at his home in Madison. He was 89.

Lee was survived by his wife Barbara Jean, 86, his three sons Jeremey, 50, Jonathan, 38 and Jeffrey, 37 and his daughter Jennifer, 47. He also had four grandchildren, Breanna Thomas, Michael Thomas, Dawn Thomas and Timothy Klien.

He was a well rounded individual as he believed that it was very necessary for one to be multi-talented. He was very active many different activities such as his clean ups and services in his church community, skeet shooting, hunting and fishing, cooking, woodcrafting and many more.

"The guy seemed like he could just do it all," said one of his long time neighbors Charles Amera. "I would look over sometimes and he would be working on his '54 pickup one minute and then the next he would be cleaninf the gutters or resurfacing the driveway."

Thomas was born into a seven child family in Talullah, LA on May 2, 1945. The oldest son, Gabe, watched after all the other kids when their parents weren't at home. This became a trend as Lee, the second oldest child, took on the same responsiblity when Gabe got tired of doing so. The rest of his siblings included Steve, Lois, Betty, Frankie and Vivian.

Lee graduated from Ruben McCall High School in 1963 and then quickly moved right on to college at Grambling State University in Grambling, LA. There he studied education and administration, played basketball and baseball, kept active in the bowling club and the Kappa Psi Epsilon Fraternity. He graduated from Grambling with a 3.5 grade point average in 1968 and recieved his first teaching job in Racine, WI.

After graduation, he married his long time college sweetheart Barbara Jean in 1968 in her hometown of Shreveport, LA. Barabara graduated followed in her husband's footsteps as she graduated from Grambling in 1970 with a degree in education and the same passion for teaching. They packed up and moved to Wisconsin where Lee taught high school English and Barbara taught physical education.

Racine, WI was the birthplace for all four of his children but shortly after his last son was born, he moved them to McFarland, WI where he was offered another job as an administrator at the local high school. The city of Madison reviewed some of his work he had done and quickly offered him a job working for their school district in the human resource department. Lee wanted to be more actively involved with students so he applied for an assistant principal position at Madison East High School. In no time at all, he was hired and implementing his ideas on his students. He saw many bright, young and talented students graduate in the 25 years he spent there.

"Mr. Thomas was one of the only reasons that I kept coming to school," said Andrea Gribble, one of his past students. "He made crazy jokes and made everyone laugh which made things alot easier and less stressful in the classroom."

One of his life long quotes that he stood by states, "Life is alot easier to go through when you're smiling," stuck with all of his students and everyone who came in contact with him.

He will be buired at Mt. Zion Baptist Church. Visitation hours will be from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m.