When Flight 261 crashed, Marilyn Thompson’s life came crashing down too
-Talking with the wife to Captain Ted Thompson, chapter 4
This week I share the conversation I had with pilot and Captain Ted Thompson’s wife. We talked not only about the immediate aftermath of the crash, but about when they met, the years they shared together, who Ted was to her and how she is doing today. We talked about the foundation that was created afterwards and many other things.
“It has been a long time and yet a short time,” said Marilyn when we sat down one Sunday afternoon to chat on the phone of what has happened in the 25 years since the terrible accident.
I usually write about the importance of community and showing up for your local community. In this series of stories though I dive into the Alaskan Airlines Flight 261 deadly accident that happened 25 years ago this year with a Redlands pilot on board.
If you are joining us for the first time this week, go back and read the other chapters here:
Read the first chapter about the news coverage of the accident here.
Read the second chapter where Captain Ted Thompson's pilot friends talk about who he was to them and their thoughts about the crash here.
Read the third chapter where I share what I learned from reading the final NTSB report here. But first we start at the beginning.
Young Love - Solid Partnership
“We met at Yosemite when our families were both visiting there,” she said. “I was 14, he was 16. We just kind of went on from there.” Marilyn lived then in Westchester and Ted lived in the valley. When Ted was 18 his dad died and his mom had some health issues, explained Marilyn. “He had to be the man of the house even before then because his parents were aerial photographers, which was undoubtedly how he got his desire to be in the air with his dad,” she said. They married young and eventually had two kids, Fred and Beth.
Because they met so young, it felt like Ted grew up with her family too.
“We were kids and part of the time he was going to Long Beach State (University) and his father was so ill in the valley, he would come from Long Beach up to visit his father over the weekend and he would stay the night at my family’s house. My brothers would sit up watching movies with him. Everybody kind of grew up with him,” she described.
One of the things we already learned from Ted’s pilot friends was what a likeable fellow he was. Marilyn said it this way, “He had quite a personality that people liked.”
In the years, decades, they were married, Ted was a very supportive spouse. Even when he was doing pilot training, he encouraged and supported Marilyn doing her Master’s Degree while she was a teacher’s assistant. “He was very supportive of that even though he was in pilot training and the wives were absolutely expected to cater to the guys’ needs because that was the old Air Force way. But he never complained about me wanted to do something,” she said. “I always worked with kids doing after school playground duty in the L.A. area. And I wanted to do a jump rope thing at a night presentation, and I wanted to have a black light and have just the jump ropes to show. So, he spray painted jump ropes with fluorescent colors. And when I taught PE in the schools, he built 42 pairs of stilts out of wood.”
“He was always supportive of teachers,” she said. “When he heard people say, oh yeah teachers, they get three months off. He would go: Oh no, they don’t. They are working all summer, you just don’t see it.”
At the YWCA Redlands, Marilyn taught aerobic dancing by Jacki Sorenson in a room they rented there. Marilyn taught in the evenings, and “He was just great with that,” she said. Later Marilyn would teach instructors out of state and travel to do that once a month, when their kids were little. “He said: Great! Go for it,” she said. “I just don’t think there are a lot of guys that are that supportive.”
“There may be but I am betting he was one of the best,” she said.
Marilyn and Ted Thompson were married for almost 31 years (August 9, 1969).
Then the accident happened on January 31, 2000.
The Accident
In 2000, Marilyn worked at the San Bernardino School District office. “One of my workmates called me. She said, Oh Marilyn, there’s been an Alaska plane down. And of course, we didn’t know what kind it was or anything about it. I said, well, I haven’t heard anything, so don’t worry about it,” Marilyn said. “On my way home, I started just getting feelings of worry, you kind of get a sixth sense about what’s going on. By the time I got home, I still hadn’t heard anything and I had no idea who to call.”
“Of all the years he has been flying, I mean, all the years we were married, I never really expected that I would have to call somebody to find anything out. But I called the one number I did know which was the number for the people who knew which flight to take in LAX. All I said was, where is Ted?”
During the years Ted worked for Alaska Airlines, he flew up and down the coast of California, specific destinations were omitted from the couple’s communications. “So that’s what he said when he was going on a trip. I would ask, where are you going? And he says; ‘Up the coast’ or ‘Down the coast’. How many shirts do you need? And I would get that many shirts. That’s all I knew, I never worried about it,” she said.
“This guy [at LAX] said, let me get somebody to talk to you. So, he got this guy from the union. And nobody said anything straight out,” she said. “What this guy said was, Marilyn, I don’t have any news for you right now, can I call you right back? Ten minutes.”
Later he told Marilyn, that he had set his watch to call her back in exactly ten minutes in order for her to not agonize one second too long.
When he called her back, he said, “I have no good news for you now.”
“So, I kind of learned [about the accident] through the union and through the people at LAX,” she said. She kind of expected two uniformed guys to come to her front door. “The doorbell rang and here was one of the pilot’s wives and I said, Oh no, Barb, are you my guy?”
“I will never forget,” she said. The wife asked, “Am I the first one here?”
“I felt so bad for her that she was the one who had to come with the news.”
Soon her house was filled to the brim with union people and ex-Jet America people. “Alaska bought Jet America, so we knew most of the people. Jet America started in Long Beach so those were the people we knew.”
“I remember that night, they said, what do you want from us? They were willing to whatever I needed. I said, I wanted my kids home and want them to be flying with someone and they arranged for everything,” she said.
In order for Marilyn to have control over the situation in the coming days, “They brought me a cellphone so that I wouldn’t have to take any calls on the home phone if I didn’t want to. All of the business calls would come through the cell phone,” she said, describing the cellphone as the size of a shoebox.
“My son was in speech class in school and he really stepped up. When the people at the door wouldn’t leave us alone, the papers, I think it was the sheriff told us, if you would just say something to them then they will leave you alone. So, Fred went down there and made a comment,” she said. “I was so proud of him, I didn’t know he did that.”
His sister, Beth, badly wanted to give a comment too then but was on her way home from New York where she studied at that point. “Both of my kids were just dying for everybody to know how much they loved their dad and what he was like,” she said.
The Thompson family did let one of the national morning shows speak to them, which might have been Good Morning America according to Marilyn.
Beth has this comment today: “Growing up it seemed like my dad was at every performance, every game (if not the coach), the chaperone for all school events and trips. He was always there to take photos, videos and cheer for not only my brother and me but also our friends. I take comfort in remembering he often referred to himself as self-actualized.”
Marilyn knew that family members took a boat to the accident sight at sea the weekend after the accident. But she was not interested in that.
Instead her family went to the memorial in Seattle arranged by Alaska Airlines. “I thought it was very nice,” she said. “It was very devastating even to the airline,” she said. In Seattle at Alaska Airlines, “They have made a beautiful little sculpture outside the main office building there, it mentions all the people onboard.”
The memorial for Ted in Riverside was special. “Just seeing all of the uniforms was just overwhelming, it was beautiful. And to hear people step up who had something to say,” she said. “I have it on tape.”
On the day of the dedication of the monument built in honor of the victims on the beach in Oxnard, Marilyn and her family were there as well as at the 10-year anniversary. Her ex-husband and she would stop by if they were in the area. They did not make it to this year’s 25th commemoration. “I am not big on the group commemoration things,” she said. Big group events delving on the horrible turn of events were not her thing. “I’ve always been cheerful,” she said, trying to look at things on the bright side.
Though she would like to go back to the memorial site in Oxnard, “Now that I am near my daughter and my family,” she said.
“[The airlines] had people contacting me for years, to see how you are doing and that kind of thing,” she said. “And I ended up friends with the president through it, Brad Till? He just retired.”
ADVICE FROM MARILYN FOR ANYONE EXPERIENCING A CATASTROPHIC EVENT
· It really takes time
· Let people who offers help help if you are comfortable with that
· You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do
· Do what you can over time
· Hold on to the good memories and all of the photos
· Exercise, walk and get outside
· Think positive (but that’s not so easy)
Coach Ted
“I told my son this after the crash. I said, dad had to step up and he did and he always did,” she said.
That kind of leadership that started in his teen years, came naturally to Ted in his adult years. “Ted liked to be in charge, he didn’t push for it. He would for example always end up being the foreman in a jury,” Marilyn said.
One huge passions of Ted’s were coaching and being there not only for his kids but their friends and team mates as well. “When Ted turned 40, he was coaching Fred’s soccer team. He did a lot of coaching and mostly refereeing at AYSO,” she mentioned. “And what he wanted to celebrate his birthday, he wanted to spend it with the kids, with the team. So, we had cupcakes with the kids.”
That compassion for the kids and teens around them repeated itself a decade later. “When he turned 50, he wanted to spend it with his son’s swim and water polo teams,” she said. “He always wanted to be with kids and they wanted to be around him.”
Many times, Ted would become like a mentor for the kids around him.
One afternoon, Ted took a neighbor’s kid on an afternoon flight. During the flight their conversation turned around to the young man’s girlfriend. “Don’t have kids too soon and don’t get into debt,” said Ted. And the guy replied, “Well, I am not in debt.”
Ted Thompson was quite conservative with money and would always tell the kids to put some money away each time they got paid. Marilyn described it this way, “Be a good worker, never worry about being overdressed, present a good picture.”
In the years since and even today, Ted shows up in conversations.
Marilyn and her daughter, Beth, talk almost daily. “We are always bringing up things about dad,” she said. “One of the things is that he had stacks and stacks of paper. He wouldn’t put them away but he knew what was in his stacks. So, if I have stacks, I will say, don’t worry I know what is in each one. That’s from him.”
“Tax season definitely reminds me of him because he would find a million things to do around the house, very constructive things, but it wasn’t the taxes,” she chuckled.
“When someone offers me a mint it will remind me of him,” she said. “Because he was taking his check ride at age 17 and we had been to an Italian place the night before. He loved spaghetti with garlic and oil. And the check instructor asked him, would you like a mint? And he said, naw, I’m okay, thank you. And the guy said, I think I am going to insist!”
“I have things all around the house that reminds me of him,” she said.
Not only Marilyn herself, but family have said that if the accident hadn’t happened, they would have stayed together. For a while Marilyn was married to one of Ted’s friends, but they divorced in 2019. Today Marilyn lives in Laguna Nigel with a sister, a brother and her daughter close by.
Their daughter, Beth worked in advertisement and is now a homemaker. Their son, Fred is an attorney in Fremont, California, and has his own law firm.
Creating a Legacy for the Future
In our talk we also got around talking about The Thompson Tansky Scholarship Foundation that was established after the accident.
The foundation was started by a handful of pilots from the Jet America and later Alaska Airlines. “They had a golf tournament that made some money, and they said what are we going to do about this money? And then they asked me if it was okay if they established a foundation for scholarships, and I said for sure,” she said. “For twenty years we had a golf tournament, but that petered out.” Today, people can contribute directly to the foundation and through Amazon.
Marilyn was chairman of the board until last year, a total of 20 years.
“It is too hard for me to read,” she said, her eye sight is not what it used to be. The numbers of applications kept going up, “And we decided long ago, that we wanted it to be for any people who applied.” The Foundation accepts application from students of Alaska Airlines employees, from retired and current employees. “They work for Alaska but want to go to school for something bigger and better,” she said. “I have always thought that it was the best thing to represent what Ted would have liked to do if he was still around which was to mentor people and to kids. It just goes back to: You go to school, you do the work and we will help you out and there you go! It was just a perfect thing to speak for [Ted] and for Bill Tansky, his family and all of the crew.”
Final Thoughts
Even though the devastating loss will always stay with Marilyn, “I am doing wonderful in terms of mental state, my social life, because I have my family here,” she said. “I am very lucky to have landed where I landed.”
“I love to be outside in the garden,” she said. Before we spoke, she had just finished making cookie dough. “Baking is what I’ve always loved to do. I love that people love my cookies. I especially love taking cookies to doctors, makes them smile at me.”
After an hour’s talk, Marilyn still had memories to share about Ted.
“Because Ted traveled with the military and the airlines, he loved to sample any of the food anywhere and he would often bring me back recipes,” she said with a laugh. “Now you try making this! He loved it and loved to try all kinds of things.”
“Before the crash he got really into opera. He was very open to different cultures, different types of music. And he always had been. He listened to a lot of Sinatra for a young guy,” she said.
In conclusion, “He was an eclectic type of guy,” she said. “He made you laugh, always.”
One of Marilyn’s final comments also brought us to the recent cuts in the FAA from the current administration.
“[Ted] would totally be against it,” she said of the current decimation of the FAA. “He went to the Airforce Safety School, so he happened to know a lot about safety. But I don’t think that anyone who flies thinks there needs to be fewer Air Traffic Controller people.”
Next week I will look a little closer at who else was on the fatal Flight 261. In these chapters, the focus is on the person from Redlands but a total of 88 people perished that day. Subscribe to never miss a chapter, share with a friend.
Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this piece, please like below and subscribe above.
I am close to 100 subscribers, can you help me get past this milestone? Please share.