Obituaries : Court of Appeal Justice Leon Thompson

Justice Leon Thompson of the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Los Angeles has died of cancer, it was learned Tuesday.

Thompson, 58, who died Thursday after a two-month battle with the disease, served two years as a Los Angeles Superior Court judge before his appointment to the higher court in 1982 by then-Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr.

Among his colleagues, Thompson was regarded as a judge who combined “extraordinary knowledge of the technical details of the law with a deep understanding of how the law affected his fellow human beings,” said a fellow justice who asked not to be identified.

‘He Had a Heart’

“He had a heart, and it showed in his opinions,” the justice added. “He was probably the kindest, gentlest man I’ve ever known.”

Thompson, born in Los Angeles on Sept. 19, 1929, the 11th of 12 children, would have attributed this quality to his mother.

Although Maud Lora Peair Thompson raised her children in humble circumstances in South-Central Los Angeles, she “had a lot of compassion and it rubbed off on the rest of the family,” Thompson told an interviewer several years ago. His father, a minister, died when he was a small boy.

Thompson’s ambition as a youth was to become a jazz musician. He had shown little interest in school. But in his late teens, a bout with tuberculosis left his lungs too weak to pursue his chosen instrument, the saxophone.

While recovering at a sanitarium, Thompson met a fellow patient who changed his life. He was Japanese student who had been forced out of medical school and sent to a relocation camp during World War II.

Thompson, who credited the young man with teaching him to read, relished retelling the story, according to his wife, Gloria.

“When I came out of the sanitarium, I was not the same person that had gone in,” he told the interviewer. “Through books, all of a sudden the world opened up.”

According to his wife of 35 years, Thompson became an avid reader.

“He achieved quite a bit in the 38 years’ lease on life that he had following that near-fatal illness when he was only 20 years old,” she said. “That’s what he called it: his ‘lease on life.’ ”

Taught Elementary School

Thompson earned an education degree from UCLA in 1954. While working as an elementary school teacher, he put himself through USC Law School at night, earning a degree in 1960.

In private law practice, Thompson became actively involved in community affairs, including church and bar association activities. A longstanding interest in politics led him to make a bid for a seat on the Los Angeles Board of Education. He lost.

The reason, he later said, was that he tried to work outside the political power structure of the black community--the ministers. It rubbed Thompson the wrong way, he said, to see ministers as the community’s power brokers.

It was that experience that led the lawyer to seek a judgeship--to “work behind the scenes, rather than as a politician,” his wife said.

Thompson received numerous awards--including the Justice Bernard Jefferson Award as the “outstanding judge of 1983” from the Langston Bar Assn., the black lawyers association of Los Angeles County.

Mildred Lillie, presiding justice for the 2nd District Court of Appeal, called Thompson “a dedicated lawyer and an outstanding judge. . . . He will be greatly missed.”

Thompson’s wife said that at the time of his death, her husband “felt he had achieved most of the goals he had set out for himself.”

Besides his wife, Thompson is survived by a son, Michael, and two daughters, Judith and Cheryl.

Funeral services are scheduled for 10 a.m. today at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles. A memorial service at the Court of Appeal is planned in mid-June.