Francis Vre Thomson, War Chest Drive Executive

Creator

Preview

Identifier

20028832

Description

Francis Vre Thomson, War Chest Drive Executive A man wearing a man's dress shirt, a dark tie with a tie chain, and gray slacks sits in a wooden office chair between two tables. On the left table is a desk calendar, a flippable page daily calendar, spiral bound notebook, pads of paper, a leather pouch with his tobacco, an ink pen handle with nib, a pipe, and a pack of matches. On the table on the right are papers and a Bakelite dial telephone with buttons for several lines. He is holding a file folder. The man is wearing wire rimmed glasses and a wedding ring. A desk calendar is taped to the wall behind him. On the newsprint clipping of the photo the label "Organization Ready" is printed on top. War Chest Drive Executive Worked for Years With Boys By STANLEY GUNN. Working from 8 a. m. to 'any time' as the man behind Fort Worth's successful Community War Chest drives makes Francis Vre Thomson, a sinewy, pipe-smoking Scot, the ' busiest man of the week.' As executive director of the Community Chest, he is 'loaned' with seven staff members to put over the War Chest drive, which this year has the goal of $649,457.68. The behind-the-scenes work on the drive began in August and for Thomson reaches its climax this week with the perfecting of organization and the distribution of information Kickoff is Tuesday. Kickoff of the drive is Tuesday and 'then it is up to the rest,' he says. From his bare, unadorned office in the Majestic Building, Thomson in the past few weeks has directed the distribution of some 5,000 packages of printed matter and has completed the arrangement of his organization. And then there has been the matter of six or eight committee meetings to attend. The organization includes three managing directors, Marvin Leonard, William Monnig, and R. E. Harding. Then the 'big gifts' division with J. B. Thomas as chairman. Under the employes division, in charge of Homer Covey, some 2,500 persons will round out the organization. A county division, headed by Ralph McCann and Howard Maddox, will be set up Friday. Goal is $649,457. The goal of $649,457 was set by the budget committee, led by Chairman R. W. Fender, in August. Thomson's main work slackens as the drive is turned over to the division workers, but it increases when reports start coming in and auditing work will keep him and his staff busy until midnight. The increase from last year's goal of $479,000 is due solely to war needs, Thomson said. 'We feel sure that this goal will be reached. The special gifts division already has $67,000 which is 45 per cent of it's goal.' Thomson feels that the drive will be a success because of the needs of the prisoners of war, the USO and the other wartime agencies. 'You just have to walk down Main Street at night to see how bad the need is for the USO,' he commented. Native of Scotland. Thomson, who was born near Dundee, Scotland, in 1887, was in boys work for 30 years in Montreal, New York, Washington, Chicago and Fort Worth. He was with the Panther Boys Club here five years until 1939 when he was made executive director of the Community Chest, now a member agency of the Community War-Chest, a duration organization. 'I'm not the "busiest man of the week," he protested, 'but I've got the "busiest staff of the week.'" Stamped: Star-Telegram Eve, Oct. 29, 1943

Archival Date

1943-10-29

Collection Name

Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection

Collection Number

AR406-6-293

Original Format

Negatives, Black & White

File Format

JPG

Rights

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License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Subjects

Thomson, Francis Vre; Community Chest; Community War Chest; Fund raising campaigns; Charitable organizations