10-03-2004

Marine Lance Cpl. Karl Ludwig Thompson is now a U.S. citizen, 38 years after he died fighting for his adopted country in Vietnam.
   Papers proclaiming the Germany native’s citizenship were presented to his mother in a ceremony Saturday at American Legion Post 95. The citizenship is the fulfillment of her dreams, said Herta Lemons, 78, the mother of Mr. Thompson and a resident of East Lake.
   It took the diligence of Nashville resident Pat McMahon and the assistance of the office of U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., to make it happen.
   Mrs. McMahon, 57, a member of the organization Rolling Thunder, a nonprofit group that seeks to draw attention to the POW-MIA issue, met Mrs. Lemons at a veterans event a year ago last month. After learning of her son’s plight, Mrs. McMahon told her soldiers could become U.S. citizens posthumously.
   "She looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language," Mrs. McMahon said. "Herta was brokenhearted that her son wasn’t a citizen."
   Mrs. McMahon told her she would like to work on the case and solicited all the information Mrs. Lemons had.
   "What all she did, I don’t know," Mrs. Lemons said, "but, boy, she took over 100 percent."
   Mrs. McMahon said knifing through the bureaucratic red tape was a nightmare. Eventually she solicited the help of Rep. Wamp’s off ice.
   Trish Mullins, staff assistant in Rep. Wamp’s Chattanooga office, requested the proper information from Mrs. Lemons and shepherded the application through the immigration process. The material was submitted in April and approved in September.
   "I was skeptical," she said, "but they got it through. (Mrs. Lemons) was very happy, and we were very happy for her."
   Mr. Thompson was born on Feb. 22, 1945. He was adopted by Raymond Thompson when his mother married in 1955. Then 16 years old, Karl Thompson came to the United States to stay in 1961, according to Mrs. McMahon.
   Mrs. Lemons (then Mrs. Thompson) first came to the United States in 1956, earned her citizenship in 1958 and returned to Germany while her son finished ninth grade.
   After Mr. Thompson graduated from Widefield High School in Colorado Springs, Colo., he told his mother he was going to enlist in the Marines, Mrs. Lemons remembered.
   "I tried to talk him out of it," she said. "I said, ‘Go register in the Army.’ When he came back, he had a funny smile in his face. I said, ‘You signed up with the Marines.’ He said, ‘How did you know? Did you follow me?’ I said, ‘I know it by the way you look.’" Mr. Thompson went through basic training in California and was sent to Vietnam, Mrs. Lemons said. While he was stationed with the Marines at Danang, his adoptive father was stationed with the Army in Saigon. "I tried to get them together but never could," she said.
   The younger Mr. Thompson was 20 when was killed in the Quang Nam Province near Danang on Jan. 17, 1966. The crane on which he was working detonated a land mine. His adoptive father died in 1986. Mrs. Lemons said her son had been a wrestler and wrestling manager in high school, had worked evenings for a while at the Colorado Springs Gazette and was "a very gentle guy.
   "Everybody loved him," she said. "When we had his service, the chapel was so full. They closed the high school so all the kids could go to his funeral. There were people there I didn’t know knew him."
   Mrs. Lemons said her son had prepared some papers for U.S. citizenship sometime before his death, but she doesn’t know whatever became of the matter. She said a fellow soldier also enlisted his father’s help to get her son’s citizenship, but he was turned down.
   When Mrs. McMahon, whose husband is a Vietnam veteran and a former Marine, sought information on the Internet about Mr. Thompson, she was surprised at the response. Several of his fellow Marines called and wrote.
   When Mrs. Lemons was presented with her son’s citizenship papers Saturday, many of her fellow Gold Star Mothers were in attendance. One of her three daughters also came in for the ceremony.
   "It’s amazing to me that this guy’s been dead 38 years, and you find people who really cared about him," Mrs. McMahon said. "You don’t know what it’s done to my heart. It’s a moving, touching story."
   E-mail Clint Cooper at ccooper@timesfreepress.com