Wade R. Thompson, a past Paulina resident, passed away on Friday, October 13, 2006 in Sacramento California where he had traveled for his brother Scott's birthday. He was 59 years old. Wade will be buried at the Beaver Creek Cemetery in Paulina, Ore., on Saturday at 10 a.m. Oct. 21, 2006. A reception will follow at the Paulina Community Hall. The family welcomes letters of reminiscence which may be sent to Candace Thompson, c/o Postmaster, Post, OR, 97752.
Wade was born in San Pedro, Calif., on November 7, 1946 to Rudolph and Patricia (Dyer) Thompson. Wade was married at a young age to Joan Miller and had his first child, Vince, now 42, shortly thereafter. Four years later came the twins, Shannon and Brooke, now 38. He attended Encina High School and put himself through college at California State University, Sacramento, and then McGeorge School of Law where he distinguished himself as an excellent student. Within just a few years of passing the bar, he was a named partner at a top trial law firm, Friedman, Collard, Poswall & Thompson. In 1984, he formed Thompson & Dreyer (later adding Babich and Bucola). In between, he married Anita Will and had daughter Ashley, now 22.
In l991, Wade quit the practice of law and moved to Oregon with his third wife, Candace, and their daughter Chloe. There, with the same intensity -- and unpredictability -- that he had brought to the law, he became a cattleman and rancher on 2500 acres of land.
Then, in Oregon, the stories began: Of the time he painted a bull's-eye on the neighbor's bull when the neighbor wouldn't keep his bull out of Wade's cows; the time he left 17 days of hay in the field for his herd while he went on vacation reasoning that if the cows ate all of the food in the first days, it would teach them a lesson; or the time he rolled his enclosed tractor in the freezing river and barely escaped with his life, only to sit his blue body in a hot shower to thaw out. The family lost count of how many trucks and ATV's he rolled. He had, it seems, nine lives and lived each of them to the fullest. Everyone, it seems, in the Sacramento legal community, has a "Wade story." He was one of the most respected and successful trial lawyers of his time. Even opponents looked forward to cases with him -- though he would more often than not extract record verdicts or settlements from them. Judges and juries loved him. With intelligence and wit, he could charm men and women alike. He would be the first to admit, with his prematurely balding head and his mustache, it was not his looks that won the day. Rather, he had both a common touch and a sense of the outrageous about him. He was, in a word, memorable. Memorial contributions may be made to the Paulina Rodeo Scholarship Fund.
Arrangements are in the care of the Prineville Funeral Home. |
