LTG James Thompson ’50 Gives Back with a Tax-Saving Gift Annuity

In these times of financial uncertainty, a charitable gift annuity provides the security of fixed payments to support retirement income—and retired LTG and Rhodes Scholar James M. Thompson, Class of 1950, is one of many graduates who have taken advantage of that strategy to make a gift to the West Point Association of Graduates in gratitude for his Academy education and career as a military officer.

“With a gift annuity you get a substantial tax write-off, you save a fair amount of income tax, and you get annuity payments that last for your lifetime and your wife’s lifetime,” Jim explains. “The benefits are substantial enough to make a difference in your tax roll.”

Jim says he was lucky enough to avoid capital-gain tax by funding the annuity with highly appreciated stock in one of his “stranger investments”—a video game company called Activision Blizzard that has produced some of the most popular games on the market.

“I had this one series of shares and the (capital-gain) taxes were going to be really high, so I seized on that cluster of shares for my initial gift,” he says. “It’s not a huge amount of money, but it gets my foot in the door of giving back. When I leave this world, I plan to do a lot more through my estate.”

His gift annuity will ultimately provide support for the Long Gray Line Endowment. With a commitment to supporting the Academy’s Margin of Excellence programs, he makes regular annual gifts to the Superintendent’s Annual Fund and athletics.

Jim grew up in Boise, Idaho, and graduated from high school in 1945—just as the war was ending but with the draft still in place.

“Nobody knew what was going to happen, and I was very motivated to go to college,” he says.

But his family did not have the money to help pay for his education. He was in ROTC in high school and applied to West Point but didn’t expect to get in because he was listed as a third alternate. He was hoping to attend Oregon State University on a scholarship when he received a fateful telegram from the War Department.

“On the tenth of June I was told to report to West Point on July 1,” he recalls. “It was pretty last minute, but what a great surprise!"

It turns out that three of his high school classmates also went to West Point, with three of the four eventually becoming generals. Upon arrival, Jim promptly joined the cross-country team—even though he says he wasn’t a great runner—partially to avoid some of the restrictions of plebe life. As a member of the cross-country and track teams he got to begin his life-long traveling with trips as a plebe to New York and Boston, eventually breaking a 19-year-old Academy record in the two-mile run. He held the Army-Navy meet record until 1960.

Jim graduated in 1950 and was on his way to Alaska to help build radar stations to track the Russians when he was “drafted” to participate in the Pan-American games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the modern pentathlon.

“It was difficult to learn how to compete in swimming and fencing, and I had never been near a horse,” laughs Jim of three of the events of the pentathlon (which also includes two he was already pretty good at: shooting and cross-country). The U.S. team, composed of Guy Troy ’46, Gail Wilson ‘50, and Jim, won a gold medal and Jim won the silver individual medal. Troy and Wilson went on to the Olympic Games in 1952 and Jim went to Oxford in England as a Rhodes scholar.

Upon his return to the states, Jim’s military career began in earnest with a variety of somewhat unusual assignments and command tours: a company command at Fort Carson; Engineer School at Fort Belvoir; field team member in Iran, including teaching English to Iranian generals; Social Sciences Department at West Point; MAAG in Bonn, Germany; battalion commander in the 3rd Armored Division in Frankfurt; to the Pentagon on the Army staff (plans and policy); the Army War College; to Vietnam in Ambassador Komer and later Colby’s office; back to Germany as deputy corps engineer for V Corps; assigned by General Westmoreland as Army Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York; commanded 36th Engineer Group at Fort Benning; returned to the Pentagon in national security plans and policy arena including a tour in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as Director of Estimates as a BG; then sent to Turkey as the senior military officer MG, dealing with the Turkish Armed Forces; and then to Naples, Italy, as a C/S of the NATO Command (LTG). He retired from the Army in 1983 after 30 years of service.

After retirement, Jim and his wife Karin, whom he married in 1974, moved to Santa Barbara, California, to be near her family (“I owed it to her after dragging her overseas”). They lasted in California for six years: “I had enough of the politics; Karin said let’s go to Boise.” So they moved to Jim’s home town for 25 years. Karin worked as a real estate developer; Jim served as the chief of staff for two mayors and was a Library Trustee for many years. Now they reside in a retirement community in Oregon, with a condo on the beach not far away. Their blended family includes four children, three grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren.

Jim returns to West Point every five years for his class reunion. He is proud of that class, which includes astronaut Frank Borman, two chiefs of staff (one Army, one Air Force), and a former president of the Philippines.

“What I learned at West Point was so important,” Jim says. “Humility, respect for others, devotion to duty, and pride in the Academy and the accomplishments of our military forces. I’m glad to give back, and I wish I could give back a lot more.”