Bigger Than Life

"One of the things I wanted to make sure of is that I didn't want to disappoint anybody, and I could show the doubters and my old high school classmates that I could measure up. . . . I immediately buckled down and tried to make up for what I lost in high school."

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That was his hamster-wheel period, when he was husband and father while still in the 12th grade, living with his in-laws, working nights and weekends. After finishing high school, he followed Sarah to Florence State, in northern Alabama.

His ambitions were modest: Maybe he'd be a coach someday. But his wife -- who would go on to become a college English professor -- broadened his horizons. Perhaps he could become a lawyer like some of those Lindsey folks, he decided. After briefly dropping out of Florence State and working odd jobs, he enrolled at Memphis State, majoring in political science and philosophy. Vanderbilt Law School saw enough promise to offer him a scholarship.

After he passed the bar exam, he was back in Lawrenceburg, right off the village square, handling small-claims cases as a partner at a law firm with Sarah's uncle. "That's all I had ever wanted to do, is come back and practice law in my small town," he says.

But the place couldn't hold him.

* * *

Thompson started the first Young Republicans chapter in Lawrence County just as the South was switching from Democratic to Republican. He rode the wave.

A job opened in Nashville for an assistant U.S. attorney; thanks to his Republican connections he was transformed again, into a federal prosecutor, nailing moonshiners and bank robbers. He won every bank-robbery case but one (a bad guy whose name he can tell you instantly to this day).

When Howard Baker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, ran for reelection, he asked Thompson to help manage his campaign. The two spent many hours on the stump, and Baker came to trust the young lawyer. After Baker's victory, he approached Thompson with an idea. The Senate, he said, was forming a committee to look into this Watergate business. He needed someone to be the minority counsel on the committee. "I wanted somebody I trusted rather than a legal luminary," Baker explains.

Thompson leaped, as always.

His three kids were in grade school; they stayed with Sarah in Nashville. Thompson flew away, and into a maelstrom.