Pilot with a Purpose

By Harold Eugene Thomas

For many, Harold Thomas is best known for his practical wisdom in business; founding and building Idahos TrusJoist Corporation, whose success spanned just over four decades. Others would point to his legacy of philanthropy. Still others might cite his key role in the Quest Aircraft Company and development of the unique Kodiak for international humanitarian applications. Insiders might emphasize his love of family and others.

Harold wondered why he didnt know more about his own family history. It was a little perplexing. He has wanted to share more of his adventure so that his friends and family didnt experience the same loss. His life has been a fascinating journey through the business world, the worlds of aviation, missions and philanthropy; and the story is finally told here. This isnt simply a story of success and philanthropy, but a story to encourage family and friends to trust God and give themselves to His adventure for their lives! -Editor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453554036

Harold Eugene Thomas

Harold Eugene Thomas is a philanthropist, entrepreneur and local business man. Although this story is about his life it is also about faith, professionalism and philanthropy as this is Harold Thomas.

Book preview

Pilot with a Purpose –

The Harold E. Thomas Story

Harold’s own story of faith,

love and success

Inspired by Penny Thomas and

Edited by Don Dutcher

Copyright © 2011, 2012 by Harold Eugene Thomas.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010911609

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-5402-9

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-5401-2

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-5403-6

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Pilot with a Purpose –

The Harold E. Thomas Story

Harold’s own story of faith, love and success

HaroldAtAllisonRch1986.tif

Harold Eugene Thomas with his morning coffee at

his Salmon River Wilderness getaway: Allison Ranch

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Thomas Family circa 1956

Harold, Marvin, Phyllis, David and Rick

Who is Harold Eugene Thomas?

This is the history of a man that lives life to the fullest in faith, honesty and humbleness. You will find in this story a man of great integrity—within himself, in relation to others, and most importantly in his relationship with his Lord.

In His Own Words

May 17, 1926, was the date of my birth. Like most babies back then, I was born at home, in Glenns Ferry, Idaho. They say I was an eight-pound baby boy. My childhood was filled with events similar to those you have experienced.

In my adult life I was blessed with marriage to my beautiful Phyllis. Over sixty years later we see more clearly His blessing through three wonderful sons (Rick, Marv and Dave Thomas).

My purpose in writing this is to leave a history for my children and subsequent generations, as well as other family members. I had no family history stories when I grew up. I wondered about our history many times. My hope in writing this autobiography is that the Thomases and related families and friends will better understand and appreciate where we’ve come from and what God did in our lives.

1

Thomas Family History

Great Grandparents

I do not have much information about my families’ early years but I will start with my great grandparents on my father’s side.

My great grandfather’s name was Hanford Albert Thomas. He was born on June 19, 1848, in New York. He died February 27, 1925, in Kuna, Idaho.

My great grandmother’s name was Ann Eliza (Parmenter) Thomas. She was born on June 14, 1849 at Hopkinton, MA. She died December 3, 1923, in Kuna, Idaho.

My father’s side of the family was of Welsh and English descent. They had immigrated to the United States in the early 1800s. My great grandparents came to Idaho in the 1915 era and operated a hotel in Kuna, Idaho. They raised plums and other fruit there. They are both buried in the Kuna cemetery. In the 1970s I visited the grave site and asked about them around town, but no one knew them. Dad never talked about them to me, either.

Grandparents

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Grandfather Louis Thomas

My grandfather’s name was Louis Eugene Thomas (my father’s father). He was born on November 2, 1882, in Cropsey, Illinois. He died October 10, 1964, in Nampa, Idaho. His picture is on the right.

His wife’s name was Armina Bell (Spencer) Thomas. She was born on March 14, 1885, at Benton Harbor, Michigan. She died November 14, 1962, in Seattle, Washington.

I never met her and I know very little about Louis E. Thomas. I have a few personal memories of him, however.

As a very young boy I remember riding around Glenns Ferry, Idaho, with Grandfather in his Model-A Ford coupe. It had a very small, narrow shelf across the back of the seat just wide enough to place a large, red can of Granger Rough Cut chewing tobacco, which he smoked in his pipe. I remember going to his home in Glenns Ferry and occasionally stayed with him and his second wife, Julia, in a small white house on the south side of town.

There were many song birds in cages in the front room. They were always singing and making a lovely sound.

He apparently left my grandmother, Mina, short for Armina, in Iowa and moved to Kuna and then to Glenns Ferry to continue working on the Union Pacific Railroad as a brakeman. That was about 1917. In the late 1950s, when I was regularly traveling southern Idaho, I would stop in and visit grandfather Louis, as he lived alone in a one-room house, about a block south of the highway in Hammett, Idaho.

We would usually walk to the coffee shop on the highway and have dinner. In the early 1960s he moved to Nampa and lived with my sister Helen. He died there October 10, 1964, and is buried in the Glenns Ferry cemetery.

On my mother’s side of the family, my grandfather’s name was Wilhelm Steinkopf. He was born on July 23, 1860, at Clayton, Iowa. He died March 17, 1935, at Blackfoot, Idaho. He is buried in Gooding, Idaho.

My grandmother’s name was Carrie A. (Ennis) Steinkopf. She was born on December 23, 1866, in Missouri Valley, Iowa. Her date of death was May 16, 1935, in Boise, Idaho.

My mother’s side of the family, the Steinkopfs, lived in Boise while I was growing up. Here’s a picture of me, my mother, sister Helen, and my father and all the Steinkopfs in front of the Steinkopf home at 2110 West Bannock Street in Boise. See the following page.

Wilhelm Steinkopf came to Idaho from Iowa to homestead land near Gooding. He arrived around 1915, when irrigation water first became available in that area. He was apparently not a great farmer and it was tough grubbing out the sagebrush for farmland. He apparently went broke clearing the sagebrush. He abandoned his homestead and moved to Glenns Ferry and later to Boise.

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Young John Gaddis, Gladys Gaddis with baby Willie Gaddis, Carrie Steinkopf with baby Helen Thomas, George Steinkopf, Wilhelm Steinkopf holding Arthur Gaddis, Harold Steinkopf, Ruth Thomas, Ralph Thomas with son Harold Thomas.

When I was in the fourth grade in Boise, I would walk four or five blocks to Grandmother Carrie Steinkopf’s house, where she lived alone, to play the hand-wind Victrola. I’d listen to old records, the thick ones, called 78 rpm, and eat powdered-sugar-coated dates, which she usually had on hand for my visits.

She was always very pleasant and seemed to always be glad to see me. She died about 1935 and was buried at the Morris Hill Cemetery in Boise, near my Uncle Harold, her second son.

Steinkopf, means stone head in German, and they are all pure German. When they immigrated to the U.S., I do not know. My red hair came from the Steinkopfs, as my mother and Uncle George had reddish hair and lots of it.

My dad had dark hair and was really bald from the time he was about 20 years old. Apparently Marvin takes after the Thomas side and Ralph, in particular, with the lack of hair!

That is about all I know concerning my grandparents. I’ve always wished I knew more about my ancestors. That’s one of the reasons I’m passing on these tidbits of history to my own family: so that they needn’t feel the same sense of loss and puzzlement even though it is not a long history.

Parents

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Ruth and Ralph Thomas

My father’s name is Ralph E. Thomas. He was born on September 18, 1904, at West Bend, Palo Alto, Iowa. His date of death was June 27, 1964, at Boise, Idaho.

My mother’s name is Ruth Steinkopf Thomas. She was born on November 24, 1904, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Her date of death was January 18, 1979, at Boise, Idaho. She is buried in Weiser, Idaho.

About 1920, my father, Ralph E. Thomas, came out from Iowa to be with grandfather Thomas. His younger sister, Grace Margarit, later mentioned to me how badly she wanted to go with him out west, but he would not take her and she was very upset with Ralph. She was three years younger than he, and this may have been the reason he would not take her. Apparently she could not get along with their mother either, as she left home at an early age, like Ralph.

I believe Ralph had just graduated from the eighth grade and left home to work with granddad Thomas in Idaho. Dad went to work for a contractor doing heavy earthmoving work.

HaroldThomasGenealogy.pdf

He helped build the new railroad grade up the long hill out of Glenns Ferry toward Mountain Home, Idaho. He ran a four-horse team pulling a Fresno scraper: a large, wide-mouth, steel bucket with a long handle sticking out the back. You raised the handle, which lowered the blade in front, cutting into the earth and piling dirt into the bucket. Then, to move your bucket-load of earth elsewhere, you held the handle down so the lip of the bucket cleared the ground and the team could easily skid the load over the ground. Once reaching the desired location, you tipped up the handle and either dumped it all in one spot, or more carefully spread the dirt evenly over the ground.

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Earliest Advertisement for the Fresno,

invented in 1883

Years later I would run one of these at our Allison Ranch to improve the airstrip runway. It did the job well and I’d use a Fresno again for that kind of job. I remember that you always had to go forward with the Fresno, as there was no way to back it up. After that job was completed Dad went to work, in the winter time, at the local pool hall. In the summers he ran a five or six-horse pack string hauling food and supplies to the sheep camps in the mountains north of Glenns Ferry. Sometimes when returning with an empty pack string he would be hired to backhaul moonshine whiskey from mountain stills. He later told me that this really paid much better than hauling supplies to the sheep camps!

He and my Mother, Ruth E. Steinkopf, met in Glenns Ferry where she worked in the local Ford garage and he worked in the pool hall. They were married in 1925 in Glenns Ferry. I assume it was there, anyway.

I was born in Glenns Ferry on May 17, 1926, and I remember Mother saying she had me at home with the help of a midwife.

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Ruth Thomas with

Baby Harold in 1926

My mother was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on November 24, 1904. She had a twin sister Gladys, though they did not look much alike at all. She moved west to Gooding with her family. The family consisted of her parents, oldest brother George, second son Harold, and sister Gladys. She graduated from high school in Gooding about 1924 and moved to Glenns Ferry to work in the Ford garage for her older brother, Harold. She was the bookkeeper and person in charge of the office area. I was named after my Uncle Harold but I always looked more like George with the red hair.

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Harold at 13 Months

in 1927 Glenns Ferry

I have hardly any memories of living in Glenns Ferry as we left in 1927 to go to Boise for a short time. One event was told to me by mother many years later.

I was so young that I could barely walk well, but managed to walk out to meet Dad as he was coming home from work.

He had this large, red Irish Setter who bounded out ahead of me and ran to meet Dad, then ran back toward home slamming me into a stone wall next to the sidewalk. The accident left me with a large cut over my right eye. We lived on Bannock, a block or so from mother’s parents. While there I stuck my right index finger into the gears of the washing machine and cut off the end of the finger. Mother said everyone cried about my losing the end of the finger but me! In those days the electric motor and open gears were on top of the machine and all was exposed. I guess I was curious how it worked!

We moved to Nampa in 1928 and my sister Helen was born there on March 20, 1928. Two years later my second sister, Donna Mae, was born March 13, 1930.

My Dad and his partner opened a pool hall called the Waldorf Cigar Store on Twelfth Avenue near the train depot. He told me that he often came home with only a few dimes from an illegal poker game that he had going in the basement. He had pool tables and a cigar counter and a lunch counter, I am sure, as he had them in the other places, later on. I am also certain that he raffled off saddles and other horse gear as he did later at other places.

I finished the first grade in one of the small bungalows at Roosevelt Grade School on Twelfth Avenue. I was only five years old then and mother must have figured I was not too bright and needed more school, or she wanted to get me out of the house! I assume it was the latter.

Dad and his partner went broke in 1932 and he moved the family to Twin Falls where I attended the second and third grades.

He traveled for several years selling Liggett and Myers Tobacco Co. products. He called on pool halls and establishments that sold cigarettes and pipe tobacco.

He apparently left that job when he was hired to open a pool hall on the main street of Twin Falls, called Snowball’s Sport Shop. Apparently he was quite successful here as he always seemed busy with customers and the lunch counter and the pool tables were full most of the time. I remember often going there and sitting on one of the counter stools and always ordering a vanilla milk shake, and sometimes I received a sandwich too.

Snowball’s was right next to the local theatre and on Saturday mornings I received a15-cent allowance that I usually spent there.

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Young Harold with mother Ruth,

sisters Donna and Helen

I went to the morning cowboy movie for 10 cents and bought some jelly beans or gum drops for 5 cents. I really liked the weekly cowboy movies and went every Saturday to see Ken Maynard, Bob Steele, Buck Jones, Tim McCoy and the many other famous cowboys of the time. We lived near the center of town and it was only a few blocks to school or the park or the theatre.

While we were living in Nampa, Mother sometimes took me to visit the Otto Schild family in Gooding for a week in the summer. This is where Uncle George lived and worked while in high school. In the winter he drove a team and sleigh to pick up local children for school (like a country school bus). The Schilds had a daughter and a young son named Otto, Jr., so everyone called him Junior.

Otto, Sr., ran a very large pig farm and raised thousands of pigs for market. I used to go out to the pig pens and chased