When Barbara Thompson was a teenager, she helped out at her father's pharmacy by restocking shelves and doing some bookkeeping. Over the years, she watched many people come into the Granger, Utah, store for medicines. Some paid up front. Others her father allowed a charge account. Barbara started noting that not all those bills got paid.
Then one day, in came a young couple with an infant. They were not familiar customers, but they needed antibiotics for their baby. As she watched her father fill out the prescription, she caught herself hoping her father would not let them charge the cost. He did. After the couple left, she confronted him. "Dad, why did you charge it to those people? You know you're never going to see the money."
She has never forgotten his response. He turned to his youthful daughter and asked, "Barbara, do you have the food and clothing you need? Do yo have medicine when you're sick?"
Well, yes, she answered. Her father continued, "This couple did not have, for whatever reasons, the money for this antibiotic that their child needed. It's not going to hurt you if they get that medicine."
"That was really profound to me," Sister Thompson recalled. Among all the lessons she learned from her father while working in his pharmacy, she learned compassion.
That virtue has been her anchor and strength through years of social work — helping abused and neglected children — and will be among her greatest attributes as a member of the new Relief Society general presidency. Sister Thompson was sustained as second counselor to Relief Society General President Julie B. Beck during April general conference. (Please see May 19 and May 26, 2007, issues of Church News for profiles of Sister Beck and her first counselor, Silvia H. Allred.)
Sister Thompson, a soft-spoken woman with a quick sense of humor, brings with her years of working with youth and families in her capacity as an executive director of an international assessment center for abused and neglected children. The former member of the Relief Society general board is also an official with Christmas Box International, a charity focused on abused and neglected children.
Her first thought when called to serve in her current Church position was, "Not me! Not me!" Prayer and scriptures "have been a huge source of comfort," she added.
That comfort has obviously been with Sister Thompson since her days as a child. Born in San Luis Obispo, Calif., to Wesley Peter and Fern Rymer Thompson, she came with her parents to Utah when she was 2 years old. Brother Thompson had graduated from pharmacy school at the University of Utah two years previous, and he and his wife wanted to rear their children near family.
Peter and Fern Thompson, who had six children, taught their children to work hard, but include some fun. Though Brother Thompson worked up to 70-hour weeks at the pharmacy and served in bishoprics and stake presidencies, he found time to go camping and boating with his family. And there were always sports. The boys played baseball, basketball and football in school. The girls enjoyed volleyball and basketball.
Sister Thompson also remembers with a sense of longing the days of canning sessions with her mother. "We would cut and peel and do fruit and sit and laugh and she'd tell us a lot about when she was growing up."
From her mother, Sister Thompson and her siblings learned more than just cooking, canning, housework and laundry. They learned how to work and serve. "For many of my growing up years, she was the Relief Society president or Primary president. It seemed like almost every day when we came home from school there was something fixed for someone else. You didn't just rush over and grab a piece of cake because that cake was probably going somewhere else," Sister Thompson said, laughing.
Sister Thompson's mother died in 1992 from cancer, a time the new Relief Society counselor called "probably the most traumatic experience in my life." To this day, she said, people come up to her with memories of ways her mother helped and served others.
Maybe that's why when you ask Sister Thompson why she entered social work, she can't give a definitive reason. "I've always loved people and I've always cared about people. I thought, if I can help somebody, I want to do that."
She surmised that the gospel principles she uses in her practice "work in any situation — the principles of love and compassion, listening and caring and good communication."
Sitting in her office in the Relief Society Building, she looked back on lessons she learned as a young missionary in Germany. Struggling with the language and with finding sincere people to teach, she became discouraged and wondered, "Why is this so hard? If Heavenly Father wants us to find and teach and baptize people, why doesn't He tell us where to go and we can quit wasting our time?"
She said she learned "that it wasn't meant for us to just have everything handed to us — that it's the effort and it's the work. That's what really helps us to make any useful accomplishment because then it's ingrained in ourselves."
She applies this approach when thinking of the challenge of a single Church member.
"I finally got to the point where I thought, 'You know, Heavenly Father knows what my life mission is a lot better than I do. I've just got to have some faith and trust.' This is OK for me; just do the best I can. I have to be happy along the way. I'm generally a happy person. I love to laugh and I love to have fun."
Laughing, working hard, and having fun — among many things learned from her parents.
E-mail: julied@desnews.com