“my brOther aNd i Were raised tO be cONcerNed abOut the future Of Our family aNd cOmmuNity.”
after
serving as a police officer and chief, 47-year old Tyrone Thompson became a consumer fraud investigator for the Missouri Attorney General’s office He was passionate about kids, his own and his community’s. And over the years, he became a mentor for hundreds of disadvantaged youth. In the summer of 2010 two teens attempted to rob Thompson. Guns were fired and Tyrone Thompson lost his life. “Those teenage suspects were the kind of boys Tyrone would have tried to mentor if he had met them,” says his brother Anthony Thompson, MBA ’88, President/CEO of Kwame Building Group. “And if he had met them I know he would have touched them.” Thompson knows his brother wouldn’t have hesitated to help even those who would take his life because giving back to the community is how the Thompsons were raised. Sometimes
To Tyrone Thompson (pictured right) the heart of solving crime and unemployment was a good education system. That’s why as an example to his children and a role model to the at-risk teens he mentored, Thompson was working on his degree in business at Webster. Violence claimed Thompson’s life before he could finish his studies. At his funeral Webster University awarded Tyrone Leon Thompson a honoris causa B.A. degree in management.
you give back with money. Sometimes it is with your time. And always it is with opportunities. That is what Tyrone Thompson hoped to give those he mentored; the opportunity for something different, something better. “My brother and I were raised to be concerned about the future of our family and community,” Thompson says. “Education is the one guarantee to a better life. That’s why mentoring minority youth and supporting early childhood education along with scholarship opportunities is our way of assisting America in restoring its place at the top of the educational ladder with minorities leading the charge.” This year, the Thompson family continued Tyrone’s commitment to others by launching the Tyrone Thompson Institute for Nonviolence. Its goal is to match mentors with students suspended from school. The Institute is based on a successful program at St. Louis’ Dunbar Elementary School funded by Thompson’s
philanthropic Kwame Foundation. It was through that project that Thompson learned that most of the kids suspended from school considered it a day off. Many spent the day at home with no one to supervise them. What they really needed was someone to hold them accountable for doing their homework and improving their behavior. “Hundreds of kids are suspended every week,” says Thompson. “These are not bad kids, and they are not dumb. All they want is somebody to care about them.” The Institute will train college students as scholars in the program. They’ll learn about community service, receive a small stipend for their work and then become the new mentors for our next generation. They will be the new ones to care; building on the work Tyrone would have loved to be doing himself.
Group picture: anthony thompson with the kids
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