Bob Lutz: Garden Plain PA announcer carries on through battle with cancer

Bobby Thompson, the public-address announcer for Garden Plain athletics, is pulling for a long playoff run for the Owls’ football team. Others are pulling for a longer run for Thompson, who was diagnosed with colon cancer on Valentine’s Day 2014.

“It’s one thing to hear you have cancer,” Thompson said. “It’s another to hear seven months later that it’s not curable. I’ve been living with that for a little over a year now.”

Living. And working. And not missing Garden Plain football or basketball games, even though the cancer has, Thompson said, gotten into his bones and his doctors are telling him he might live another two or three years.

“You can’t dwell on the negatives,” Thompson said. “There are so many more people who are worse off. You see that just going to the cancer center, the hospital or just walking down the street. I try to be a very positive person. I want to make everybody smile, I want to make people laugh.”

Thompson, 49, has worked at Yingling Aviation as a controller for 24 years. He has put a son and two daughters through Garden Plain High and has a fourth-grade daughter on her way.

“I keep showing up, every day,” he said. “I don’t want to give up.”

Others aren’t giving up on him, either.

“He’s a trooper,” Garden Plain athletic director Lee Gillen said. “This is my fourth year here and he’s become a good friend. He’s all about this school and the kids who go here and he’s just been a real strong advocate.”

Thompson, though, is not one who accepts charity well.

When news of his diagnosis first got out, Garden Plain officials organized a fundraiser to help defray some of the medical costs.

“And Bobby being Bobby said something like, ‘Dammit, I’m not dead yet,’ ” Gillen said. “But he deserves the attention.”

Thompson said he’s grateful for the good will of others, just not comfortable.

“A lot of people have done a lot of good things for me in the last 620 days,” he said. “I got a chance to go to a World Series game last year. My boss here at work usually goes on a trip with the WSU basketball team and he let me go to Utah last year. And another friend to me and my wife to Hawaii with the Wichita State volleyball team a couple of months ago.

Thompson has missed only one football game and two basketball games since becoming ill and started doing public address at Garden Plain wrestling matches last year.

“That’s more fun than I thought it was going to be,” he said.

He loves the connection to the Owls and the feeling of involvement with the teams. And there’s no better place to hang out on a Friday night than the Garden Plain press box, especially since the Owls are 8-1 and headed to the state playoffs.

“Bobby is one of those guys who would do anything for anybody at any time without any thoughts of himself,” said Mark Becker, who operates the clock at Garden Plain games. “But when we do things for him, we have to make sure he doesn’t know about it until the very end because he does not like the spotlight on himself. At all.”

Thompson takes the PA job, and objectivity, seriously. He tries not to be a total homer, he said, although there are times when he fails in that mission.

“I find that sometimes I start to turn into a cheerleader,” he said. “Sometimes you’ve got to step back and realize that you’re just the public-address announcer.”

He remembers becoming somewhat unruly a couple of years ago during a playoff game against Collegiate and going what he deems to be overboard with some calls.

“After we stopped them on a fourth down, I said something like, ‘We stand for defense at Garden Plain.’ I probably should have been more professional.”

Owls fans, no doubt, would disagree.

Thompson ran a youth basketball program in Garden Plain for years and has always been involved in sports. Doing so now is as much therapeutic as enjoyable.

“If you want to know anything about his illness, you have to ask because he’s not going to come out and talk about his issues,” Becker said. “He keeps that close.”

Thompson admits to being scared. He doesn’t know how much longer he has but is determined to make the most of whatever time is left.

“Football is my favorite, really, for doing PA,” Thompson said. “There’s so much camaraderie up in that press box during a game and it takes so much more than one person to do a game. You have to have somebody run the clock and two people to spot. And it takes somebody funny to keep tensions down in the room. It’s fun to listen to everybody’s opinion on the right play and the wrong play to call.”

Thompson’s voice is part of Garden Plain football. And it’s still strong, still loud, still resolute.

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 5:10 PM with the headline "Bob Lutz: Garden Plain PA announcer carries on through battle with cancer."