Remembering Ralph Thompson and his Fatal Fall

Tragedy struck Huntington 60 years ago this month when English teacher Ralph E. Thompson fell 14-feet to his death on the school gym floor while rehearsing with four students for a November 20th Thanksgiving assembly program.

Mr. Thompson came to Huntington in 1938 and taught for a year at Woodbury Avenue Elementary School. The following September he became one of the original faculty members at the brand new Robert K. Toaz Junior High School. He was active in the community and lived at 71 Central Parkway, within walking distance of Toaz. (He previously resided at 39 Madison Street in Huntington.)

On Sunday morning, November 8, 1953, Mr. Thompson was rehearsing in the Toaz gym with a group of four boys for show the group planned to perform during a school-wide assembly. This wasn’t any old show, since Mr. Thompson was an accomplished trapeze artist and each year he trained a set of student performers in various circus arts skills.

During the fateful rehearsal Mr. Thompson either slipped or blacked out while trying to turn on the trapeze, falling through the air and striking his head on the gym floor. He was well-known for never practicing with mats. Billy Griffin, one of the four students there that day, ran to a telephone and called his parents who lived nearby. His mother called the doctor and Mr. Griffin’s father rushed to the school. Dr. Palmieri soon arrived and an ambulance followed. 

Transported to Huntington Hospital, Mr. Thompson passed away there the next day, Monday, November 9 at 5 p.m. He never regained consciousness after sustaining a fractured skull and other injuries.

Toaz Principal J. Taylor Finley quickly moved to soothe stunned and grief-stricken teachers, students and parents. Mr. Thompson headed the Toaz yearbook and supervised writing for the school newspaper. He was a former performer with the Hagenbeck and Wallace Circus Shows.

His First Student Performer

His first performer at Toaz was Lucy K. Sammis, who later worked as a Huntington English teacher for more than 30 years. “You balanced on the quarter-inch steel wire, six feet above the floor, first hanging on grimly to the beginner’s balancing pole,” Ms. Sammis wrote in a 1984 letter to the community about Mr. Thompson and what it was like to be one his protégés. “Months later, the fishbone of fear still in your throat, you jiggled and danced across the endless 25-foot rope. If you really felt hero-love, you agreed to perch on his shoulders while he danced across. The umbrella and the feel of the circus tent became our world.”

Mr. Thompson, who performed many trapeze shows for local schools and organizations, was born in Springfield, Illinois. He earned a BA degree at the University of Denver and an MA at Columbia University. Prior to coming to Huntington, he was a junior high school teacher for nine years in Englewood, Colorado.

Locally, he completed a term as commander of the American Legion’s Huntington Post 360 and was active as an officer and member of several town and county organizations.

Mr. Thompson, who was part of the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church congregation, was a first aid instructor for the Red Cross and a member of the Men’s Voluntary Hospital Corps., the Blood Bank Gallon Club, a scoutmaster and a former president of the Huntington Teachers’ Association. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.

The summer before his death was a happy time for the the Toaz English teacher as he attended a family reunion in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Stella.

“Ralph Thompson was a clown, a father confessor, a gentleman athlete,” Ms. Sammis wrote. “His passion was a perfectionism he demanded of a few.”

Driving Force Behind Scholarship

The driving force behind the creation of the Associated Teachers of Huntington’s scholarship fund, Mr. Thompson served as its chairman from 1951 until his death. In the days following that terrible November morning, the ATH renamed the fund the Ralph E. Thompson Memorial Scholarship Fund. It presented an award each year to a graduating Huntington student who planned to pursue a career as a teacher in New York State. The scholarship was renewable each year for four years of college study.

Teachers performed plays for the community, played basketball games against each other and against parents and students, donated money and collected money from school PTAs to fund the scholarship, which was a source of tremendous pride for decades.

About 1985 the ATH decided to drop Mr. Thompson’s name from the scholarship on the belief that too many people didn’t remember him. This decision did not rest well with Ms. Sammis, who in an October 14, 1987 letter to School Heritage Museum curator Jack Abrams said: “Ralph Thompson was one of the finest public school teachers I ever had, and I was sorry when the ATH decided not to use his name on the scholarship fund.”

Today, there are some ATH members who are hoping the organization will change the fund’s name back in honor of Mr. Thompson and educate a new generation about his career in Huntington.

Remembered as a Hero

“Teenagers tend to be hero worshippers or dissidents,” wrote Ms. Sammis in 1984. “The students who remember Ralph Thompson remember him as a hero; one whom you looked forward to seeing every day in class, and afterwards in the gym. He was a gentle hero, never pompous or officious, never negative or rigid. He had no children of his own, and we students became his children. He cared about each of us personally – our writings, our stormy teenage struggles, our strivings. One former student remembered the jut of his jaw, his purposeful stride. Another remembered his voice, with a slight Denver, Colorado touch, but never strident. He was what someone stated “every teacher ought to be.”

Mr. Thompson was laid to rest in Pinelawn National Cemetery on Thursday, November 12, 1953.