Sunday, November 1, 2015

Fred Thompson 1942-2015

Former Senator Fred Thompson (R-Ten), who also had an acting career, has died at age 73 in Nashville, following a recurrence of lymphoma.  Born in Alabama and raised in Tennessee, Thompson was married at age 17 and inspired to become a lawyer after his father-in-law gave him a copy of the autobiography of Clarence Darrow.  At age 30, he was hired as counsel by the Senate Watergate Committee and became the first person in a public hearing to bring up the matter of the White House tapes.  In 1994, Thompson won a special election to serve out the Senate term of then-Vice President Al Gore, won a regular Senate election in 1996, and decided not to run for reelection in 2002.  He briefly ran for the GOP nomination for President in 2008.  Thompson and his first wife Sarah Lindsey had three children, one of whom died in 2002.  He and his second wife Jeri Kehn had two children.

Read more at The Tennessean, Yahoo News, Variety, The Hill and WKRN.

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