A happy Montana childhood
Bishop Thomas has been an organizer from his early years

By Christine Dubois

Bishop George Thomas’ mother says he was a good boy who never gave her any trouble.

Except for the time he put poker chips in a cake pan and popped it into a heated oven. Or the time he helped get the family car ready for a vacation trip by filling the gas tank with the garden hose.

Bishop Thomas grew up in a large, close, devoutly Catholic family in Butte, Mont. He was the second of five children. The family lived modestly, but always had enough for the basics – unlike some families in the mining-dependent town. When the Anaconda Copper Mining Company went on strike, children would pass out at school because they hadn’t eaten.

“Growing up in Butte helped me understand what it means to have to struggle for a living,” said Bishop Thomas. “I’ve always had a sensitivity for people who have faced hardship and struggle.” His dad managed the local J.C. Penney store and later the local Safeway. Young Thomas earned money for school supplies by mowing grass, shoveling snow and helping his father deliver catalogs.

As a child, he was known as the neighborhood organizer. He would gather kids together for games of baseball, hide-and-seek or kick the can. It wasn’t hard to find playmates – he had 28 first cousins in town.

“I’d round up the whole neighborhood and we’d spend the day playing,” he recalled. “It was a simple life.”

On summer Sundays, the clan would gather for picnics. In the winter, they’d skate together and build igloos and snowmen.

Bishop Thomas loved animals and made pets of mice, birds, frogs, chipmunks and rabbits. He looked forward to autumn, when he could go hunting with his dad, grandfather and uncles.

His grandfather taught him to fly fish. On his first trip to the Big Hole River, he reached back to cast – and caught the fly in the tree overhead.

“I had to break it to my grandfather that I’d lost his best fly,” he recalled. “He just laughed. ... Some of my happiest days were out in the wide open spaces in Montana.”

At St. Anne Catholic School, he learned to study hard and respect his teachers. He was well liked and a good student. His favorite subjects were literature, theology and history.

His younger brother, Don Thomas, who now lives in Missoula, remembers the bishop as a mischievous child with a creative flair for practical jokes.

One night Don was roused from sleep by the feel of something sharp crawling across his cheek. Opening his eyes, he saw a large silver spider lying on his pillow and began screaming hysterically. By the time their mom rushed in, her older son was “sleeping” soundly on the top bunk, the foil spider he’d lowered onto his brother’s bunk safely hidden under his pillow.

Bishop Thomas was also good at delegating. When his mother left him in charge of cleaning the house and baby-sitting his younger siblings, he appointed himself the “Robot Master” and directed the other “robots” to do the work. “Then Mom would come home and he’d get all the credit,” Don recalled. “He was an administrator from the word go.”

All’s forgiven now, of course. “He’s very generous with his time and committed to his family,” said Don. “He’s the best brother I could ever ask for.”

Like many Catholic boys, Bishop Thomas loved playing priest, serving “communion” with Necco wafers and Kool-Aid. But his devotion was more than role playing. The family lived three blocks from the church, and he often accompanied his mother to daily Mass. In times of trouble, the family would say the rosary together. Once, when Mrs. Thomas had to rush her youngest to the hospital with seizures, Bishop Thomas and his sister Mary Ann gathered the rest of the children and began praying the rosary.

He graduated from Boys’ Central High School in Butte, which was run by the Christian Brothers. He wanted to enter the seminary, but his parents encouraged him to spend some time enjoying regular college life before making his final decision.

He attended Carroll College in Helena, and earned a bachelor’s degree in literature and philosophy.

In his junior year, he told his parents he’d made his decision: He was going to enter St. Thomas Seminary in Bothell and become a priest. They were thrilled.

He was ordained in 1976 and served as associate pastor at Holy Family Parish, Kirkland, and St. James Cathedral in Seattle. He was also parish administrator at Sacred Heart Parish, Bellevue, and, from 1992 to 1998, pastor of Holy Innocents Parish in Duvall.

Those who served with him say he was a wonderful pastoral leader – organized, people-oriented, and respectful and supportive of lay ministers. He carefully planned special liturgies and spent a lot of time working on his homilies. He was unfailingly polite, but showed a “steel core” of resolve when he felt a situation required it.

“You could tell he loved parish ministry, and people loved him right back,” said Gail Dimock, pastoral associate at Holy Innocents. “He always had a deep sense of caring for the people, a great warmth. ... People here are just waiting to make him a pope now.”

He also served for 12 years as Catholic chaplain to the King County Jail and the Seattle City Jail. “I saw that most of the people in there were ordinary people with extraordinary difficulties,” he said. “People who made mistakes, or deliberately committed some kind of wrongdoing. I felt the Church needed to be present with a message of forgiveness and reconciliation.

“I’m eternally optimistic about the human condition,” he added, noting that his work at the jail only reinforced that. “Everyone’s redeemable. I’ve seen a lot of success stories, people who have turned their lives around.” Many whose lives he touched still write or call.

Looking for ways to be of more service to the people he met, he went back to school to earn a master’s degree in counseling and community mental health (University of Washington, 1983) Three years later, he added a Ph.D. in philosophy.

Parish ministry appealed to Father Thomas so much that it was with mixed feelings that he accepted an invitation to leave full-time parish life and serve the archdiocese with his administrative skills. In 1987, he was appointed chancellor and vicar general, positions he held until his ordination as a bishop.

In November 1999, Archbishop Alex J. Brunett stunned him with the news that he had been named auxiliary bishop of Seattle.

“One of the great joys I’m feeling and experiencing is that by becoming a bishop, I belong to every parish and have a new home, so to speak, in the lives of all the parishes,” he said at the time.

When he’s not on official business, Bishop Thomas enjoys reading, swimming or just having fun with his family. In Seattle, he lived with his pet birds in a Bellevue townhouse just minutes from his mother and close to his three sisters’ families. He dotes on his 15 nieces and nephews.

His sisters say he’s a wonderful storyteller who regaled their children with stories he made up. “They still light up when they’re around him,” said his older sister, Mary Ann Dewing. “Next to God, he always puts family first.”

Bishop Thomas also enjoys entertaining. He’s mastered a variety of gourmet vegetarian recipes – none of which calls for poker chips.

Reprinted by permission of the author from the Catholic Northwest Progress, the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Seattle. This article appeared in the Progress on Jan. 27, 2000, a day before his ordination as a bishop.

Published in The Montana Catholic, Vol. 20, No. 6, June 18, 2004.