MARY THOMAS: 1923-2010

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2010-01-15-1001140880-story.html

By Trevor Jensen and TRIBUNE REPORTER

Chicago Tribune • Jan 15, 2010 at 12:00 am

Mary Thomas' schooling ended with the third grade, but she always reminded her nine children that she had something she called the "mother wit."

Whatever that was, it proved equal to the task of raising seven boys and two girls on Chicago's West Side. Mrs. Thomas was determined her children would get the education that escaped her in the segregated South. She worked at a Catholic Church so they could attend the parish school, and she rode herd over their daily assignments.

"I realize now, she looked at our homework, and she probably didn't even understand it," said her daughter Ruby Carlsen.

The mother of NBA Hall of Famer Isiah Thomas, Mrs. Thomas' story was told in a 1989 made-for-TV movie starring Alfre Woodard.

By then, she had left the poorer section of the city behind. But she never forgot where she'd been, and every Thanksgiving and Christmas, Mrs. Thomas and some of her children would pack boxes with food and presents for families struggling like they once had.

"We would not have made it if someone had not given us a helping hand," she reminded her children. "Remember those boxes we got from the church?"

Mrs. Thomas, 86, died Wednesday, Jan. 13, in Adventist Hinsdale Hospital, a hospital spokeswoman said. A resident of west suburban Clarendon Hills, she had suffered from heart problems and underwent surgery in November.

"She'd always said, 'You have to have 'termination,'" her daughter said. "She always said 'termination.'"

Born Mary Washington, Mrs. Thomas grew up poor outside Vicksburg, Miss. A dust-up with another woman led her father to put her on a train for Chicago, where an uncle lived, when she was just 13.

"I wasn't raised tough, but I knew enough that I couldn't let anyone hit me without fighting back," Mrs. Thomas told the Tribune in 1989.

In Chicago, she worked various jobs and married Isiah Lord Thomas II, the father of their nine children. The couple separated when their youngest child, the future NBA star, was small, but they never divorced. Her husband died in 1987.

Living in small apartments around the Garfield Park neighborhood, Mrs. Thomas worked in the kitchen and gymnasium at Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica to cover her children's tuition. The family was on public aid, but she refused to live in public housing, once even marching to City Hall to confront Mayor Richard J. Daley when her caseworker told them such a move might be necessary.

"I was crying and crying so the police let me through," she said in the 1989 Tribune story. "They must have thought, 'This woman is crazy.'"

She held off the trouble that was readily available for her boys with a quick wallop if necessary.

"She didn't take any stuff," her daughter said. "She was a real taskmaster."

In a scene depicted in the movie on her life, "A Mother's Courage: The Mary Thomas Story," she pulled a shotgun on some gangbangers trying to recruit her sons and threatened to blow them across the Eisenhower Expressway.

What wasn't shown, her daughter said, is how often she helped neighborhood kids by opening her home and sometimes even posting bond so they could get out of jail.

Her son Isiah was a basketball prodigy, performing on-court stunts while still in kindergarten during halftime of Our Lady of Sorrows' elementary school games.

All nine of her children graduated from high school, and four received college degrees, Carlsen said. Isiah Thomas commuted 90 minutes to attend St. Joseph High School in Westchester.

After winning a NCAA championship during his sophomore season at Indiana University, he decided to enter the NBA draft.

"When he told her he was leaving early to go pro, he said he was going to give her an easier life, she didn't have to worry about anything," Carlsen said.

Trips to the West Side, often with boxes of items to donate through Our Lady of Sorrows or Marillac Social Center, sometimes left her in tears. According to her daughter, "She would always tell Isiah, don't you ever forget where you came from."

Mrs. Thomas also is survived by four other sons, Lord Henry, Larry, Mark and Preston; another daughter, Delores Thomas; and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Two children preceded her in death.

Visitation will begin at 10 a.m. Monday, with a Mass at 11:30 a.m., in Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica, 3121 W. Jackson Blvd.

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ttjensen@tribune.com