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"listen i'll spare you the details, it had to be done because uh... [john oliver factoid from 2014]. and uh. anyway i gotta go."
Mr. Thompson, 50, grew up in a working-class family in Jewell, Iowa. He spent his childhood summers “walking beans” on farms, going row by row through the fields to kill weeds with a knife, or working manual labor at turkey and hog farms, according to two friends.
“He was just a farm kid living out in rural Iowa,” said Taylor Hill, 50, a close friend of Mr. Thompson from childhood. “Everybody got along with him and he got along with everybody else. He was just a great, silly, funny, smart guy to be around all through the years that I have known him.”
A diligent student, Mr. Thompson quickly rose to the top of his class of about 50 students at South Hamilton High School in Iowa, graduating as valedictorian in 1993, teachers said. He threw himself into extracurricular activities, playing on his high school basketball team and the golf team, and playing trombone in the school’s marching band and orchestra, yearbook photos show. He was homecoming king his senior year, and class president.