Bill Thomas graduated from Plant City’s Marshall High School where he played trombone. He attended Bethune-Cookman College on a music scholarship, and planned to become a music teacher.
But Thomas’s number came up in the draft lottery in 1969. He landed in Vietnam in April, and served his year there as a combat military police (MP) soldier. As a combat MP, among other things, Thomas patrolled at night to thwart ambushes, handled highway and convoy protection, and set off pressure detonated mines, and command detonated mines to clear roads.
“The bad thing about Vietnam is, you hear the war during the day, but you see it at night—because of all the tracer rounds,” Thomas commented. “When somebody is shooting at you, you can actually see the tracers. Between each tracer is five bullets.”
“It took me a long time to understand the things you go through,” Thomas said. “To me the biggest thing is the shock. You see people going about their daily thing, then you get on an airplane in California. Then 16 hours later when you got off the plane, people were shooting at you, and you are running because of incoming. That was your introduction. You are supposed to get on that same plane a year later, fly back to the states, and act like nothing happened. You can’t do that. I was supposed to be the same person. That’s not possible. You are going to change. I saw myself change while I was there. My mom said I was different. It takes awhile to get your feet back under you. You never forget it, but you learn how to deal with it. When you got off the plane people were protesting—calling you baby killers and all kinds of stuff—not good.”
The Army rotated Thomas to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, AL, as military police. “I was pretty fortunate,” Thomas commented. “I went as an E2 [private] and came back I made E5 [sergeant].” At Redstone, Thomas reenlisted. “I tried to look at the positive side of what the military had to offer—everything has negatives to it as well—then I decided to reenlist.”
From there, in July 1970, Thomas went to the Panama Canal Zone. Soon he was approached about being a military police investigator. After seeing success in that work, the Army asked him to apply for its Criminal Investigation Program, which he did. “Then, I was also asked to apply for officer.” Thomas became an Army Criminal Investigations Special Agent. “I worked in narcotics in Central and South America for two years—which was kind of a harrowing experience, because of the danger to my family. I made it through that and rotated back to the states.” At Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, GA, Thomas continued his work as a CID Special Agent. “The Special Agent in Charge sat me down one day, and talked to me. Because of what he had seen, he thought the forensic science field would be good for me because of what he called my sense of urgency when it came to the cases I was involved in.” Thomas applied and was accepted into the forensic program. “There were only seventeen of us.” The course lasted 104 weeks. “The final examination is 40 hours—it takes you a whole week. You can look at anything you want to, but it won’t help you. One bad identification was minus 100. If you made a bad identification, you couldn’t pass. The way they talked about that is, if you made a bad identifiction, you put the wrong person in jail. Or you didn’t put the person in jail who should have been there.”
Thomas then spent five years in Frankfurt, Germany, as the Division Chief for the Latent Print Division, which handled all of Europe, including the ships in the North Atlantic, for the U.S military, and for the Canadian forces in Europe. Later the Army rotated him back to Atlanta to be Division Chief for U.S. Army Crime Laboratory—which oversaw three military crime labs around the world. He retired from the Army as a Chief Warrant Officer 4—the equivalent of a major.
The State of Mississippi hired Thomas in 1998 to get their four crime labs accredited. “In November 2002, Sheriff Judd called my house and talked to my wife and wanted to talk to me. So, I did talk to him. He offered me Identification Administrator for the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.” Thomas took that position in 2003 and worked there until he retired in May.
Thomas continues to do good in Plant City. Among other things he is on the board of United Food Bank, helps out at the Bing Rooming House Museum, and teaches a forensics class to high schools students.