Jon Thompson can recall him and his family listening to his 103-year-old great-grandmother tell stories about leaving Sicily for a better life and ending up in Birmingham, Alabama.
“It’s a pretty amazing story to hear your great-grandmother tell everyone how she ended up getting to America and going through Ellis Island, falling in love with her husband to be and establishing roots, a family. It’s good memories,” Thompson said.
Family has been a theme for Thompson throughout his life, and he is hoping to bring that meaning into his new position as Auburn University’s liaison to the communities.
Thompson said he’s always been an Auburn and Red Sox fan because all his friends as a kid were Alabama and Yankees fans, but he truly fell in love with Auburn when he experienced it as a student.
“We all share the Auburn Family description,” Thompson said. “You’ll get people who aren’t familiar with Auburn to ask what that means. It’s not something that you can really describe to them. For me, the answer is, you have to see it and feel it understand it.”
After loving his time while in school at Auburn, he went back home to Birmingham and worked in editorial design. He worked for a couple businesses including marketing for UAB, which gave him a deeper appreciation for higher education.
He ended up working at Sothern Living Magazine and spent time working all across the south.
“That was a great job,” Thompson said. “Got to travel the south and experience a lot of things that you only read about in magazines — a lot of different small towns and good restaurants and travel destinations.”
Thomson enjoyed his 12 years with Southern Living, but after the magazine merged with another company, he was given time to think about what he wanted to do with his career.
As many members of the Auburn Family have done, Thompson fell in love with the idea of being back on The Plains when he and his wife were at a football pep rally. He went home that night and looked at different positions hiring at the University.
He came across the position for director of special events and spent hours into the night going through the application process. Within a few days, he was being interviewed by Susie Gogue and has held the position ever since.
Going from the world of editorial design to planning special events for the president of Auburn was a bit of a change, but Thompson said getting in touch with southern culture helped him understand how to do a good job putting on events for southern people.
“Southern Living is considered one of the top resources of all things southern whether it’s food, home décor, gardening, travel, really defining southern culture and southern hospitality,” Thompson said. “…that experience transitioned nicely into special events because we do a lot similar events and projects.”
Furthermore, because his work at Southern Living consisted of many three or four-day long road trips in a car, he experienced a similar work culture to Auburn.
“You really got close to your colleagues, so there was that family atmosphere in the workplace that’s very similar to what you experience here at Auburn,” Thompson said.
Thompson will have many of the same responsibilities in his new role, but Thompson’s new official title is executive director of city and community relations, special events and estate operations.
“It’s understanding that unique relationship and really creating an opportunity to have good channels of communication between the University and the city,” Thompson said.
He will represent the University at city council meetings, county commission meetings and other professional meetings. He will be at the forefront of city and University partnerships. He will also provide comprehensive event management to the office of special events on behalf of the office of the president and the Board of Trustees.
“That town and gown culture that makes Auburn University and the City of Auburn a unique and special place,” Thompson said. “Others before me have done a lot of hard work in getting us to where we currently are.”
Thompson said the relationship is constantly evolving, and he is excited to see how the entirety of Auburn will preserve the notion of family for all walks of life.
“Being a liaison, for me, is very important to understand the partnerships, the bonds that already exist, so I’m going to work hard at hopefully improving and strengthening those bonds,” Thompson said. “It’s a really exciting opportunity for me that I’m really looking forward to.”
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