Published: March 19, 2008 05:04 pm            

Dr. Frank Thomas dies

Was noted civic leader, historian

KNOXVILLE — Dr. Frank C. Thomas, former president of The Stearns Company, a noted civic leader, banker, OVC board member, and an invaluable repository of the history of McCreary County, died last Thursday, March 13, in Knoxville. He was 87.

Born to Mitchell and Ella Thomas at Stearns, Kentucky, on March 29, 1921, he graduated high school there and then took his bachelor's degree at the University of Tennessee in three years.

He studied dentistry at Northwestern University in Chicago, where he served on the faculty before graduation, an honor seldom given in the history of the school.

He served in the U.S. Army in 1943 and 1944, and in the U.S. Navy in 1945 and 1946, and again in the Navy from 1952 through 1954.

He took up his late father's practice of dentistry at Stearns in 1946, but changed careers suddenly in 1958 at the age of 37, when he became vice president and general manager of the Stearns Coal & Lumber Co., a family-owned enterprise with holdings in Kentucky, Tennessee, Michigan and elsewhere.

Thomas was an officer or director of various other Stearns enterprises including the Kentucky & Tennessee Railway, B.R. Campbell and Sons, King Lumber Company and the Stearns Mining Company. He became president of the parent company in 1962 and after 1986 served as its vice-chairman and then as a consultant. This tenure was interrupted for only a few years, beginning in 1976, when he became executive vice-president of the Blue Diamond coal company at Knoxville.

Thomas was also prominent as a director and vice-chairman of the First National Bank of Oneida, Tennessee, from 1963 and as a director of the Outdoor Venture Corporation of Stearns, Kentucky, since 1972. He attended an OVC board meeting only three weeks before his death.

Civic activities included a term as a director of the Federal Reserve Board's Nashville branch, and he was a trustee of the Stearns Congregational Church, member of the Stearns Independent School board, elder of the Presbyterian Church of Somerset, Kentucky, and co-founder and director of the McCreary County Museum at Stearns.

Thomas was married for 54 years to Mary Veach Thomas, who died in 1997. He is survived by his son, J. Patrick Thomas, of Houma, Louisiana; two daughters, Cathlyn Thomas and Carolyn Littlejohn, both of Knoxville; and two grandsons, Karl Littlejohn, of Geneva, Switzerland, and Drew Littlejohn, of Knoxville.

Donations in lieu of flowers are requested to be made to the McCreary Heritage Foundation, Stearns, KY 42647.

        

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