Ralph Thompson:
CLASS OF 1970
Granite City High SchoolClass of 1970
Granite city, IL
Ralph's Story
Life
I graduated from SIU-Edwardsville with a BS degree in Education and History (with a Geography minor) in 1974 and went to grad school for 2 years but did not get any more degrees.
I stayed in Granite until 1980 working variously at teaching high school in Hazelwood, then managing the OK Corral Lounge in Granite and then managing the Corral Liquor store. In 1980, I married local girl Denise Barr. In July of that year, we moved to White Bear Lake, Minnesota to live my my brother and sister-in-law while I went to a technical school to learn computer programming. Then in 1981, we moved to San Francisco. I got a job working for IBM in San Jose so we moved down there. I have been with IBM since. With IBM, I was transferred a lot so we moved to Gaithersburg, Maryland; Manassas, Virginia; Owego, New York; Little Meadows, Pennsylvania; Longmont, Colorado; and Estes Park, Colorado. Then in 2003 we moved to Nashville, Tennessee. My wife ...Expand for more
Denise has had to start over at every place we moved so she has been everything from a manager of a TCBY to a manager of Shipping and Receiving for Outdoor supplies companies. She currently is working in Shipping for the Shop At Home network here in Nashville. I have stayed good friends with Tim Moore and Rick Cardwell all these years. In fact we 3 met in 7th grade Spanish class in Coolidge Junior High in 1964. Taught my my mother, Charlotte Thompson. I have brothers in Maryland, Minnesota, and Edwardsville. I have sisters in St Louis and Hurst, Texas. Mom passed away in 1984 and Dad in 1996.
My current job with IBM is Software Security for Commercial accounts running the VM platform on the mainframe computers. Some of my customers are American Express, Avis, Honeywell, Visteon, Fairfield Condiminiums, On Semiconductor, ING, Michelin and Colorado State University.
Denise and I never had kids so we spoil our nieces and nephews.
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