When Frank Thompson served on the Kalamazoo County Board, he wasn’t known for staying on-topic. If the business before the commission failed to interest him he’d get up and ring a bell on the wall. But some knew Thompson - who died this month at age 91 - for a different role: as a longtime officer with the Kalamazoo city police.
Thompson kept a photo album with highlights from his career. He showed it to me last year, when I stopped by his home to ask him about his last run for commission. (He lost the Democratic primary to incumbent Mike Seals.)
Sometime around 1950, a motorist had called the police to say that bees had swarmed his car. Yes, they were bees, not wasps. Thompson explains what happened next.
Frank Thompson: I looked in, I knew they were honeybees. Then I knew a beekeeper out on Owen and Hart Drive where my family grew up. And he came down with the beehive, put a little smoke in there, and within 10 minutes he reached in and got the big queen bee. I bet she was at least an inch and a half long and put her in that beehive and they followed her all the way wherever she was going. And then the Gazette took a picture.
Sehvilla Mann: How many bees do you think that is in the car there?
FT: Oh boy, I don’t know. You’d have to get a calculator or computer.
SM: You’ve got this whole swarm of bees and they’re right there by the steering wheel. There’s this mass of bees, it looks like a whole hive just glommed onto the side of this car – the inside.
FT: Well, it’s probably a size 10 or 12 hat if you put it on your head.
