James Browning Thompson knew football. He excelled at offensive and defensive tackle for his high school, college and in semi-pro, playing from his teen years until he was called away at age 24 to fly B29 bombers in World War II.

Those years at Mount Holly High School, North Carolina State and with the Charlotte Clippers defined him as an athlete.

“He played good, on three different levels. He was a football nut; that was his game,” said his son, Gene. “He loved that game.”

But off the field, there was more to tell about the late J.B. Thompson than his excellence as a 6-foot-2, 220-pound football star.

Gene, 66, who lives in Mount Holly with his wife, Libba, has a story about J.B., the daddy. It was the moment when Gene realized how much football meant to his father – football above all other sports – and how that father would take time to do something for his son.

It happened during 5th-period English class.

“It was 1965, the year I graduated. I played football in the fall and ran track in the spring, and he kept up with it; he was that kind of father, so he knew we were having our conference track meet,” Gene said. “We got up and ate breakfast, all of us, and he asked me, ‘Son, where’s your track meet today?’ And I said Bessemer City. And he asked what time. I told him 4 o’clock.

“You have to remember, football games were always at 7, when he got off work. So he had never been to a track meet, ever. He said, ‘You know, I might just take off and come see one. This is your last one.’ And I said, ‘Really? You can get off work? I was thrilled to death.”

J.B. worked 12-hour days, six or seven days a week, at the family business, Mount Holly Ice and Fuel, which sold ice for iceboxes and coal for heating. Later on, it sold tires and home heating oil. He supplied tires – for free – to the ambulances that waited on football sidelines on Friday nights.

But sitting in English class, looking out the window at the practice field, Gene Thompson discovered what football really meant to his daddy. “It just dawned on me, like a light bulb went off. How many times during football season did I look over across that field and see my daddy and other men watching practice? Practice, not a game. In the afternoons,” he said. “Man, he coulda got off (for track meets). I shoulda been mad, but I just looked out across that field and said, ‘Wait a minute…I’ve seen him out there, so he could have watched track.’ But he’s a football nut, and that kind of illustrates why he’s getting inducted (to the Hall of Fame). I just laughed. I wasn’t mad in the least.”

J.B. went to Gene’s conference track meet that day, and watched his boy win the 100- and 220-yard dash and place in the shot put and long jump.

Sundays and Santa Claus

J.B.’s wife, Martha, is 95. She has much to tell about football, about the day Pearl Harbor was hit, and about raising three babies. Like Gene, she has a story about family, and what it meant to J.B.

When J.B. Thompson had time away from work – usually Sunday mornings – he liked to hit the golf course. “Well, he did it until I made such a nuisance of myself trying to get him to go to church,” Martha said.

When their daughter Mickey was about 5, and Gene was about 3, they went to Sunday School and church with Martha.

“Mickey would follow her daddy around, and he’d be getting ready to go to the golf course, and she’d tell him, ‘Daddy, the Lord Jesus won’t love you if you don’t go to Sunday School.’ And Gene was about 22 months younger and he’d say, ‘Daddy, Santa Claus won’t love you if you don’t go to Sunday School,’” Martha said.

“So he started going to Sunday School, and when they built the new church, he became head of the building committee.”

That church is First United Methodist of Mount Holly, the one on Main Street with the steeple tall enough to see from the bridge over the Catawba River.

The call of war

The Charlotte Clippers were a professional football team in the Dixie League, which was founded in 1936 as part of the South Atlantic Football Association. There were six charter members: the Norfolk Shamrocks, Newport News Builders, Richmond Arrows, Portsmouth Cubs, Roanoke Travelers and Charlotte.

Martha, who lived in Lincolnton, had met J.B. through his aunt. “It was pretty much love at first sight,” she said.

She had a friend whose boyfriend played for the Clippers, and they’d go to home games together.

“I remember we were at a game in Charlotte when they stopped the game to announce the Pearl Harbor event, and they made the announcement for all the service men to report to their place of duty,” she said. “I can remember the stadium was so quiet you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone was spellbound. You could see the fellas all over the stadium getting up to go to where they were supposed to be. It was very scary to everybody there.”

The Clippers went 7-3 that year, 1941, and the Dixie League suspended play until 1946. It folded the following year.

Football and so on…

J.B. Thompson was born in Mount Holly and played for Mount Holly High School in the early 1930s under coach Seaton Holt, alongside Dick Thompson, his brother, who was inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame in 2009. He played three years, then won a ride to N.C. State, where he also played three seasons. He would have played a fourth, and graduated, but he was sidelined by a foot infection that forced a two-week stay in the school infirmary.

“He got behind on classes, and he just dropped out,” Gene Thompson said. “He said he’d go back the next semester, and he came home and intended to finish later, but he never went back. He had to run the family business. He was studying textiles, and he would have liked to have finished his degree.

“But his primary connection was sports. And him playing on three levels, it made him the football hero.”

The Clippers called, and J.B. signed up. Gene still has his dad’s contract from 1941 – he made $25 a game.

He married Martha, and she traveled with him to Florida where, she said, he went to school to learn radar. They then went to New Haven, Connecticut for training, where she got a secretarial job in the engineering department at Yale.

After the war, he returned to the family business and in many ways, contributed to the community of Mount Holly. Gene – also a 2009 Hall of Fame inductee, with the 1963 MHHS football team – played running back, and one of his fondest memories is the watermelons.

“There was a storage room down there at the ice plant, and it was about 40 degrees, and we sold hundreds and hundreds of watermelons we’d get from Pageland, S.C.,” he said. “One time a year, before summer practice in football, he’d show up and provide us with a bunch of watermelons.”

J.B. also helped build the community building on Highway 27 and was president of the Jaycees. He had three children – Mickey, Gene and Julie, born in 1960. Gene has a son Jay, and daughter Lea; Julie has a son and a daughter. A great-grandchild was due in May.

J.B. Thompson died in July 1980 from an aneurysm of his aorta. He was 63.

“He was wonderful, naturally. He was a great man, a good husband, a wonderful father and a hard worker,” Martha said.

Jay Thompson, Gene’s son, was born too late to have known J.B. “I heard all the stories about the teams he played for, and my dad told me hundreds of times that I would have love him, and he would have loved me,” Jay said. “I’m sure his values and morals and work ethic were passed down to my dad.”

“I’m proud of him for making the Hall of Fame,” Gene said. “He supported the community in a lot of ways, and he supported the schools. But it’s the football – ask anyone who remembers him, and they always remember the football.”