Richard L. "Dick" Thomas

Dick was a first-rate pro and was a great mentor and a great person. So grateful to have had an opportunity to work with him and call him a friend.

I loved Dick Thomas. I was a youngster at The Oregonian and he was a mentor and good friend. He was one of the more inspirational people I met in journalism and inspired me to go on to The Detroit News and eventually the Washington Post. His wife Evelyn was also an outstanding person.

Dick was a great guy. I was in my 20s working as a correspondent for The Oregonian, covering Clackamas County. He quickly became my mentor and friend. He had a great sense of humor, and was an outstanding journalist. I went on to eventually work for the Detroit News and Washington Post. I'm grateful Dick helped me develop skills to get there. His wife Evelyn is also an outstanding person. Grateful to have known him. And still grateful to know Evelyn.

I worked for Dick when I was a 24-year-old reporter and he was City Editor at the Rocky Mountain News back in the early '70s. We also hunted, fished, and hiked together in Colorado. He always joked that I was soft and made of "Pepsi Cola and marshmallows" (I think that was only to mask his being short of breath, however, as he pulled out a cigarette while on the trail!) Dick was the best reporter and editor I ever met, and I learned much from him. I also tried to emulate him as my career...

Back in 1972 I took a lunch break from my job as UPI's statehouse reporter in Denver, walked down to the Rocky Mountain News, met with Dick and asked for a job. He said yes on the spot. Working at the Rocky are among my most cherished professional years. I left the news business five years after that and missed it every day since. I was very happy to see that Dick blasted through his professional years (with a brief hiatus from news as I recall) as a journalist, especially with a fine news...

His "Hits and Misses" weekly look at the Oregonian's reporting was a great learning instrument for a young kid like me, working on the paper. He was a kind man.