Longtime Kingman resident Kenneth Eugene Thompson passed away on Sunday March 26, 2023 after a long battle with heart and kidney disease.
Kenneth was born on May 11, 1938 in Mason City, Iowa, to Bessie Darren and Clarence Sylvester Thompson. She settled in Carpenter, Iowa until 1945, when her family moved west to Kingman, Arizona, where she joined Clarence’s sister, Hazel, her Rickert, and her husband, Val.
The family settled into life in Kingman, and Ken attended school in Kingman, later earning an associate’s degree in engineering.
Ken has always loved the outdoors and married his high school sweetheart, Linda May Reichert, unaware that he had found a lifelong fishing and hunting partner. They made a home together in Kingman, started a family, and raised four children.
Ken began working for John Jordan Engineering, surveying many parcels around Mojave County and setting up the site for the Duval Mine. Ken later became Associated He worked as an engineer, worked as a contractor for the Civil Utility Telephone Department, and then worked directly for CUC, a countywide external plant where he became the Chief of Engineering. His team soon oversaw the design and construction of Lake Havasu City’s underground telephone system, before even one house was built.
He and Linda left for Central California in 1987 to work for the Ponderosa Telephone Company, but in 1997 the Thompson family fell ill and returned to Arizona, where they became Lake Havasu residents for 13 years.
They joined the ranks of U.S. Forest Service volunteers in 2010 and worked as campground organizers at Whitehorse Lake for a year before taking over duties in Prescott at the Sam Butte Hiking Center.
Ken and Linda returned to Kingman in 2014 after his health deteriorated, enjoying a return to familiar sights, spectacular views of the Hualapai Mountains, and fishing on Lake Mojave and the Colorado River.
Kenneth died in 2013 from his parents, Bessie Darren and Clarence S. Thompson, and their daughter, Ira Marie Corbin. Son August Eugene Thompson and wife Kim of Mesa, Arizona, Kingman Kenneth Lane Thompson, Kingman’s daughter Norrin Lynn Thompson-Kinney (John). He also has five grandchildren and his three great-grandchildren.
A service will be held on Saturday, April 22nd at 1:00 pm at Sutton Funeral Home, Sycamore Street, Kingman.
