Thompson, Hunter Stockton, A1C

Hunter Stockton Thompson was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the first of three sons to Jack Robert Thompson (1893 - July 3, 1952), an insurance adjuster and a World War I veteran, and Virginia Davidson Ray (1908–1998), a reference librarian. His parents met after being introduced by a mutual friend from Jack's fraternity in 1934, and married in 1935.

Military career

Thompson did his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and later transferred to Scott Air Force Base in Illinois to study electronics. He applied to become a pilot but was rejected by the Air Force's aviation-cadet program. In 1956, he transferred to Eglin Air Force Base, near Pensacola, Florida. There he worked in the information-services department and became the sports editor of the base's newspaper, The Command Courier. In this capacity, he covered the Eglin Eagles, a base football team that included such future professional stars as Max McGee and Zeke Bratkowski. Thompson traveled with the team around the U.S., covering its games. In 1957, he also wrote a sports column anonymously for The Playground News, a local newspaper in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
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Accolades and tributes

Author Tom Wolfe has called Thompson the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century.

The 2006 documentary film Fuck, which features Hunter S Thompson commenting on the usage of that word, is dedicated to his memory.

Thompson appeared on the cover of the 1,000th issue of Rolling Stone (May 18 - June 1, 2006) as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word "Rolling". Johnny Depp also appeared on the cover.

The Thompson-inspired character Uncle Duke appears on a recurring basis in Doonesbury, the daily newspaper comic strip by Garry Trudeau. When the character was first introduced, Thompson protested, quoted in an interview as saying that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met, although it was reported that he liked the character in later years. Between March 7, 2005 (roughly two weeks after Thompson's suicide) and March 12, 2005,

Doonesbury ran a tribute to Hunter, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration." The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, and later strips featured various non sequiturs (with Duke variously transforming into a monster, melting, shrinking to the size of an empty drinking glass, or people around him turning into animals) which seemed to mirror some of the effects of hallucinogenic drugs described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Besides Uncle Duke, Thompson served as the inspiration for two other comic strip characters. Underground comix creator turned animation/cartooning historian Scott Shaw! used an anthropomorphic dog named "Pointer X. Toxin" in a number of his works. Matt Howarth has created a number of comic books in his "Bugtown" universe with a Thompson-inspired character named "Monseiuer Boche", as well as a musician named "Savage Henry", the name of a drug dealer (or "scag baron") mentioned in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas.

Spider Jerusalem, the gonzo journalist protagonist of Warren Ellis's Transmetropolitan, is largely based on Thompson.

Adult Swim's animated series The Venture Bros. featured a character named Hunter Gathers (who looks and acts much like Thompson) employed by the fictional Office of Secret Intelligence as a trainer.

Flying Dog Brewery is a self-proclaimed "gonzo brewery" started by Hunter's long time friend and neighbor George Stranahan. Flying Dog's Gonzo Imperial Porter is a tribute to Hunter. All the bottle labels are designed by Ralph Steadman.

Los Angeles based indie rock band Fat City Reprise's name is a tribute to Thompson's failed bid for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado in 1970.

American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold wrote their song Bat Country in tribute to Thompson. It was featured on their 2005 album City of Evil and uses the quote "He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man".

Trivia
The character of "Duke" in Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" comic strip is based on him.

Lived next to Don Johnson

He wounded his assistant Deborah Fuller accidentally with a shotgun whilst trying to scare a bear from his property in Aspen, Colorado, USA. 3 August 2000 - cleared of criminal charges of trying to wound his assistant. [27 July 2000]

Charged for possession of child pornography and sexually assulting former pornography star Gail Palmer. An eleven hour search of his home in Woody Creek, Colorado, turned up insufficient evidence to prosecute him on either of the charges, and the DA dropped its case.

Along with Don Johnson, wrote the script for the two-hour TV movie "Bridges," a story about an unstable, former alcoholic-drug addict cop who works in L.A. with a diminuitive Latino partner and dates a mafia boss' daughter. Although rejected by NBC, they bought the script and transformed it into the series "Nash Bridges" (1996).

Married for nearly 18 years to Sandra Dawn Thompson, during which he wrote what were considered his two greatest books "Hells Angels" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". During the marriage, Sandy's habit of partaking on drug and alcohol binges with her husband led to several miscarriages, and only one of her pregnancies produced a healthy child, now grown Juan Thompson. Eventually, the drugs put Hunter into a several years depressed state, fights broke out between the two, and Sandy took several beatings, some times of which she fought back and injured Hunter. When she told him she wanted a divorce, Hunter went ballistic, destroying some of her possesions and burning the manuscripts she had been writing. Sandy called the sheriff, a family friend, who sent a deputy up to her house to escort her into town. The deputy, naive to the situation, sheepishly asked Sandy if Thompson possesed any firearms, to which she truthfully replied: "Yes, 22 of them, and every one is loaded".

Since October 2000, has been penning a weekly column, "Hey Rube", for ESPN.com's Page 2.

Ran for Sheriff of Aspen, Colorado in 1969 on the Freak Power Party ticket, and narrowly lost.

Graduate of Louisville (Ky.) Male High School, class of 1955. Missed his graduation exercises because he was in jail. He later started calling himself Dr. Thompson, after purchasing a doctorate in Divinity from a church by mail order.

Appeared on a 1967 broadcast of "To Tell the Truth" (1956) when his book detailing his experiences with the "Hell's Angels" was published.

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Vol. 133, pp. 410-417. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

Once sold a Cadillac Eldorado to Lyle Lovett.

Underground cartoonist turned comics and animation historian Scott Shaw based a recurring character in his works after Thompson: an anthropomorphic dog named "Pointer X. Toxin".

His final wishes stipulated that his body be cremated and his ashes be shot out of a cannon across his Colorado ranch. Journalist friend Troy Hooper said "He was a big fan of bonfires and explosions and anything that went bang and I'm sure he'd like to go bang as well." This finally happened on August 20, 2005, along with a big celebration, attended by Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Lyle Lovett, and other close friends and family.

Grandson, son of his only child, Juan, was born 1998.

Wife, Anita, was 35 years younger than he was.

Shortly before his death he talked in his ESPN.com column about 'inventing' a new sport: Shotgun Golf.

He was the basis for the character Spider Jerusalem in the comic series "Transmetropolitan" by Warren Ellis and Darik Robertson.

Has a song entitled "Bat Country" written after him by the band Avenged Sevenfold.

Wanted his remains to be shot out of a 150 foot long canon. The canon had to be built especially to fulfill this last wish.

Johnny Depp, who starred in two movie adaptations of Thompson's books (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and The Rum Diary (2010) ), helped to fulfill his last wish.

In order to improve his writing style, he once copied F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby word for word, from start to finish.

Rode a BSA A65 Lightning most notably whilst researching his seminal book Hell's Angels. Towards the end of his period with the Hell's Angels, he wrote that he was beaten up by them.

Was portrayed by Bill Murray in Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) and Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998).

Rode a BSA A65 Lightning most notably whilst researching his seminal book Hell's Angels. Towards the end of his period with the Hell's Angels, he wrote that he was beaten up by them.

His favorite pastime was to load a barrel or oil drum with explosives and then shoot it from a safe distance with one of his many handguns.

After covering the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami for Rolling Stone Magazine, Thompson went for an evening swim in the ocean to clear his head. A light tropical storm blew up, Thompson got caught in a riptide, and he was swept out to sea. He spent the rest of the night fighting to swim back to the beach, finally crawling ashore at 9:00 A.M.

His son Juan graduated from college Magna Cum Laude.

At 15 he made an electric go-kart using the engine of a washing machine.

His mother was a chronic alcoholic.

With the aid of two friends he robbed a liquor store by starting a fight with the clerks and then cleaning out the cash register in the confusion.

During his adolescence, he and two friends broke into and robbed the same Lexington (Kentucky) gas station on three consecutive nights.

Critics have often contended that his writing style noticeably declined after his wife, Sandy, divorced him.

Following high school graduation, he joined the Air Force as a condition of his parole.

When he lived in Big Sur in the early 1960s, he rode his BSA Lightning so much he was known as "The Wild One of Big Sur".

Pleaded no contest to a drunken driving charge in San Francisco in 1987.

When he lived in Big Sur in the early 1960s, his next door neighbor was Joan Baez.

When he was living in Big Sur in the early 1960s, a group of religious fanatics moved in next door. He got rid of them by nailing the head of a wild boar to their front door, and by putting its entrails in their car.

One of the most widely quoted lines from tributes and obituaries to him was from one written by Frank Kelly Rich, editor and publisher of Modern Drunkard Magazine: "There was always a powerful comfort in knowing he was out there somewhere in the night, roaring drunk, guzzling high-octane whiskey and railing against a world amok with complacency and hypocrisy."

His lifelong antipathy for Richard Nixon was known by the former president, who barred him from the White House.

Following Richard Nixon's appearance in New Hampshire during the 1968 campaign, he offered Thompson a lift to the airport on the condition that the two of them talk about nothing but football. Thompson accepted, mostly because he thought Nixon knew nothing about the sport. He discovered that, in fact, Nixon was an avid fan, clear down to which colleges the top players were from!.

Was a staunch opponent of the War in Iraq in his later years.

Was extremely critical of the Bush administration.He once said that "if Nixon were running, I would happily vote for him instead".

Shortly after Ernest Hemingway's suicide in Ketcham, Idaho, he wrote an article titled, "What Lured Hemingway to Ketcham". Thompson concluded that Hemingway had become depressed because all of the author's favorite haunts - such as Paris and Cuba - had changed, and all of his friends were dead or different. Hemingway had nothing to live for. Ironically, the same thing happened to Thompson.