Guilbert Gustin Thompson (1911-1995) was born in Dawson, Yukon. From shortly after birth until 1918, he was raised in Eagle, Alaska, where his father, Clyde, ran a trading post. Moving to California with his mother, Cora May (Gustin) Thompson, in 1918, he did not return to Alaska until 1933. Over the next decade he worked at a number of jobs, from steamboat hand to bookkeeper to Eagle roadhouse operator and postmaster. From 1943 to 1946 he served in the Army Air Force, and upon his discharge he attended the Institute of Design in Chicago for a year, specializing in photography. He returned to Alaska in 1948. After several years of working at the post office in Fairbanks, he decided his life needed a new direction. He left Alaska for a year to study Catholicism, converted to that faith, and set his sights upon a career in education. Over the summer of 1953 he took courses at the University of Alaska to qualify as a teacher, and that autumn accepted his first teaching position, in Belkofski. Over the next twenty years he taught in villages throughout Alaska: Healy, Candle, Fort Yukon, Rampart, Chignik, Pilot Point, Saint George, Ekuk, Manley, Adak Naval Station, Chitina, Perryville, and Akutan. He retired first to Skagway, Alaska, and then to the Pioneers' Home in Sitka, where he died in 1995.
From the description of Guilbert G. Thompson papers, 1935-1989. (University of Alaska, Fairbanks). WorldCat record id: 385132709
