Over 40 years ago a group assembled from several local churches met to discuss ways in which the members could pool their resources in common to work to alleviate the plight of those in need. The emergence of the Interfaith Service Council was the result of their efforts. Since its founding, Interfaith has made substantive differences in the lives of many residents of the Northern Neck.
The organization’s work is done by a cadre of volunteers, who pitch together to collect and distribute usable household items among the needy population. Most of the workers are retired folks who enjoy the camaraderie of pitching in together to bring about better living conditions for those whom they serve.
Jim Thompson was one of the longtime stellar lights among that group of dedicated laborers in the Lord’s vineyard. Jim took the living conditions of the poor personally. He was ever mindful of the need for those blessed with material goods to share them with those many less fortunate individuals. He put himself out there as the contact point for those wanting to donate to the cause and those who were to be its beneficiaries.
He would organize pick-ups and deliveries with veritable lightning speed. If someone had a refrigerator, or a sofa, or a rug, or whatever, to donate, Jim would call his fellow volunteers to try to arrange the pickup as quickly as possible. When he expressed his thanks to the donors, he spoke to them from the heart. In that regard, he became the voice of those neighbors in need. He constantly eschewed any credit for himself, always reminding the donors that their things would make life a lot better for others.
For himself Jim preferred to take a back seat, literally. He sat in the rear of church, moving forward to usher, but returning to his unobtrusive place thereafter. Church was also a vehicle for him to express appreciation for what he always termed donors’ “generosity.”
To be trite, Jim made people “feel good” about what they had done to help others enjoy a better quality of life. He took the biblical admonition, “the poor ye will always have with you,” to heart. For Jim, that meant that our care for them would be a constant in life—one that could not and cannot be ignored.
Upon picking up donations, he would say, “We really appreciate your thinking of us,” as if the items were going to him personally. Such was the totality of his identity with his avocation as the steadfast champion of the needy.
Jim also tended to want to get the last inch of use out of any object being donated. On those rare occasions when Jim rejected an item, often at the suggestion, indeed behest, of his fellow volunteers, the intended donor knew that it was beyond salvage. As a means of ameliorating the donor’s disappointment over the rejection, Jim would offer to haul the piece to the “solid waste collection center” as a favor.
Jim never asked anyone to do anything that he would not do for himself, both readily and cheerfully. Perhaps the happiness and joy that his personality exuded came from his knowing that over the course of his lifetime he had given his all to doing good deeds with no thought of reward for himself.
By anyone’s standard, Jim’s contributions to the betterment of mankind were herculean in scope. Fortuitously, he chose to make them in our midst, for truly Jim was a “man for others.”
James Marshall Thompson, February 1944 – August 27, 2024. R.I.P.
