Dennis L Thomson, He was born on a farm in Weston, Idaho, to Ivan and Ella Thompson on February 20, 1935, the second of four children. Dennis met his dear companion of sixty years, Karen Chatterton, in Preston in 1958. They were married only a few weeks later in the Logan LDS Temple, and shared their entire lives together, living and travelling all over the world. They raised seven children together. Dennis graduated early as the valedictorian of Westside High School and proudly attended the University of Idaho. He served as an intelligence officer in the United States Army, and then went on to receive a master’s degree from Arizona State University before serving as a Foreign Service Officer for the U.S. Department of State. He later received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara, and spent the rest of his career in academia. He held academic appointments at several universities, including the University of Arizona, the University of Utah, SUNY-Binghamton, and Brigham Young University, along with visiting professorships at Trinity College and the University of Edinburgh.
At BYU, where he spent the last 25 years of his career, Dennis served as the Chairman of the Political Science Department, Associate Academic Vice President, and Associate Dean of the College of Family, Home, and Social Sciences. Over the course of his career he served as a Fulbright Scholar in Burundi and Rwanda, as an administrator at BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies, and as an American adviser to the Namibian Constitutional Convention. Dennis served as a faithful member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He served an LDS mission in the France-Belgium mission as a young man, serving as a ward bishop twice. and later returned to Jerusalem with his wife, where he served as the Israel District President.
Dennis had a passion for experiencing life and loved to travel and see the world, he spent countless hours tending to his yard and garden, and enjoyed classical music. All that knew him loved him as a wonderful example of loyalty, integrity, and hard work. He passed away on Saturday, October 6, 2018 in Pleasant Grove, Utah.