Leftists online have been callously cheering the cold-blooded murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. But friends and family are mourning the loss of a loving husband and father who rose from simple beginnings in Iowa to become the leader of a multibillion dollar company.
Thompson was raised in a working class family in Jewell, Iowa, a rural town of 1,200 people. His mother was a beautician, according to the New York Times, while his father spent 40 years working in a rural grain elevator, where he helped farmers unload and store truckloads of grain.
Members of the close-knit community have told news outlets Thompson was a beloved friend and neighbor who was valedictorian of his graduating class of 50 students at South Hamilton High School.
Hamilton County supervisor Rick Young said Thompson and other kids in the community grew up performing farm work “as early as they could hold a pitchfork or bale hay or walk beans.”
Friends told the New York Times Thompson spent his summers “walking beans” on farms, a practice that involves going row by row through fields to kill weeds with a knife. He also spent time performing manual labor at turkey and hog farms.
“Brian was a good kid when he was here — Absolutely no doubt. And the family is stellar,” Young told USA Today. “They’ve just been part of the community. … It’s just what people do here.
“If there is a heaven, Brian and his dad are fishing today,” he added.
Thompson’s childhood friend Taylor Hill told the Times his friend was “just a farm kid living out in rural Iowa.”
“Everybody got along with him and he got along with everybody else. He was just a great, silly, funny, smart guy to be around all through the years that I have known him,” Hill said.
Heather Holm, superintendent of the South Hamilton Community School District, told the Wall Street Journal Thompson was a “model student” who was named homecoming king in his senior year.
He was also class president, and a member of the high school basketball and golf team. Thompson played trombone in the school’s marching band and orchestra.
When Thompson won a national essay contest and was awarded a free trip to Washington, D.C., he told classmates he was nervous because it was his first time flying in an airplane, a teacher from the high school told the Times.
Thompson later went on to study at the University of Iowa. He was the recipient of the Delta Sigma Pi Scholarship Key, which is awarded to the student with the highest grade-point average in their class.
After graduating with a degree in accounting, he got a job at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he worked for six years before moving onto UnitedHealth in 2004.
He worked his way up to lead UnitedHealthcare in 2021, the insurance arm of UnitedHealth Group, which provides health coverage to more than 50 million people.
Still, despite his professional success, Hill said Thompson was the same down-to-earth guy when they reconnected recently after years of having lost touch.
“A lot of people are judging him, not knowing him at all,” he said. “And it’s not right. That’s not him. It’s just a sad thing of what has happened and even more sad of what people have tried to turn him into.”
Former UnitedHealth executive Steve Nelson told the Journal Thompson was “the smartest guy in the room, but somehow not in an annoying way.” He would sometimes offer to arm wrestle when disagreements arose as a way to defuse tension
Matt Burns, who worked in several roles with UnitedHealth, including external communications, before leaving the company in 2018, told National Review he was “lucky to know” Thompson “because he had a unique way of expressing how much he valued and appreciated those around him in a way that was authentic and personal.”
“BT was whip-smart and affable – a guy who could grasp the complexities of health care and explain them in simple, relatable terms true to his Iowa upbringing. In his plainspokenness, he wasn’t shy about using four-letter words nor did he suffer fools lightly, sizing up people quickly,” he said. “His star ascended rapidly and yet I don’t recall him forgetting those he worked with in the trenches along the way. He toggled between his leadership role and relatable Joe as effectively and easily as anyone I’ve encountered professionally.”
Thompson, despite being painted in recent days as the image of corporate greed and excess by radical activists, posted on LinkedIn last year that UnitedHealth works “every day to find ways to make health care more affordable, including reducing the cost of lifesaving prescription drugs.”
Meanwhile, Thompson’s alleged killer, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, comes from a wealthy family in Maryland that owns the Hayfields Country Club and Turf Valley Resort, a nursing home company, and a local radio station. Mangione, an Ivy League grad, is also the cousin of Maryland state lawmaker Nino Mangione. The wealthy family has both an obstetrics wing at Greater Baltimore Medical Center and a pool at Loyola University Maryland named after them.
As much of the media attention turned toward the capture of Thompson’s alleged murderer this week, Thompson was quietly laid to rest at a private funeral service in his Minnesota hometown.
Outside work, Thompson was “an incredibly loving husband, son, brother and friend,” his family said in a statement.
“Most importantly, Brian was a devoted father to our two sons, and we will miss him for the rest of our lives. We appreciate the overwhelming outpouring of kind words and support we have received,” the family added.
Friends told the Journal Thompson was “closely involved” with his sons, including coaching their teams.
Kelly Wirtz, a close family friend of the Thompsons, told KCCI she is “thankful” that Mangione was caught, but it “doesn’t change things.”
“I think of it as a mother, watching him grow up,” said Wirtz, the mayor of Stanhope, Iowa. “He and his brother and watching his mom and dad raise them; that’s exactly what I wanted my son to be like: kind-hearted and fun-loving.”