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Every now and then the Lord places a special person in your life, someone who fills your heart with gladness and makes you smile. For me, that was Mary Ann Thompson. I met her in 1972 when I signed up for oil painting classes at Tri-County Community College during the evening.
The campus was not as large as it is now and was located where the old prison used to be many years ago. The art class was out in the back of the new facility, and was a little white building that was said to have been the “Warden’s Quarters,” and still had the bars on the windows. Some of the other Andrews students were: Janet Stiles, Pat Hardin, Reatha Brown, Helen Birchfield, Charlotte McGhee, Patricia Francis, Peggy Yon and Gladys Hughes.
As an instructor, Mary Ann gave her students confidence and fine-tuned their talents. It was a “hands-on” class, and she taught you the different techniques on how to achieve a certain look, like clouds, blades of grass, trees, animal fur, or how to load the brush for perfect strokes in a flower petal. She was absolutely the best artist I have ever seen.
Some artists only paint certain subjects, but Mary Ann could paint anything from landscapes, animals, birds, still life and even portraits.
If you are ever in Cherokee, N.C., be sure to visit the Cherokee Museum and find her painting that the depicts the “Trail of Tears,” where the white men moved the Cherokee Indians from their land in 1836 making them walk to Oklahoma.
Mary Ann was instrumental in working with Dr. Brett Riggs, professor, WCU of Anthropology & Sociology, in establishing the beginning of the “Trail of Tears” here in Western North Carolina. The history of the Cherokee Indians was her passion, and she was an avid collector of Indian artifacts. Mary Ann, and her late husband, Jack Thompson, had one of the largest privately owned collections of artifacts in the state of North Carolina.
Everything was funny to Mary Ann, and she told us one evening that she had gotten a new car and had pulled into her garage and opened the back door to get her groceries out but had forgotten to shut the door. So, in a little while she hurried to her car and jumped in and when she backed out of the garage she broke her back door off on the side of the garage, and had to call Jack and tell him.
Jack took it to the dealership and they fixed it, but about a week later she did the same thing. She was so tickled telling us this that we were all in tears laughing. She said that Jack just shook his head and took it back again.
I took oil painting classes from Thompson every Monday night for 23 years, and
when she retired I quit. It was more than a painting class, it was a weekly social event that all the ladies looked forward to each week. We had a lot of fun while we learned to paint from a lady who always made us happy.
I am so thankful that I got to know this special lady and the memory of her wonderful laughter will always be music to my ears. She will be missed.
Kandy Barnard is a columnist for the Cherokee Scout. To talk about the Andrews Valley, call her at 361-3268 or email kandybarnard@gmail.com.