Warren Charles Thompson

Monterey ~ Warren Charles Thompson, Professor Emeritus of Oceanography and a local resident since 1953, passed away peacefully on July 11, 2011 at the age of 89. Born May 22, 1922 in Santa Monica, California to Charles Henry Thompson and Mabel Kraft Thompson, Warren went to Fairfax High School and on to UCLA, graduating with a Bachelors degree in Geology in 1943. He spent summers surveying airfields in the San Diego back country, including Miramar Naval Air Station.

During World War II, Warren was commissioned as an ensign in the Navy and received specialized training in meteorology and wave forecasting. He served as one of only three officers in the Pacific assigned to forecast wave conditions for amphibious beach landings against Japanese-held islands. These forecasts included flying low over beaches to verify landing conditions. Warren was assigned to the Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa invasions. He survived the sinking of the aircraft carrier, Bismarck Sea, which was struck by two kamikazes in February 1945 with the loss of 326 men. He also witnessed the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima a few days later.

Warren married Dorothy Anne Stanley of Los Angeles in 1948. He continued his education, gaining a Master’s degree in Meteorology from Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, in 1948. In 1953, he earned his doctorate as a member of the first graduating class of the new Oceanography program at Texas A & M in College Station, Texas. During this time, he set up a wave forecasting program for the Humble Oil Company to support its first off-shore oil drilling platform off Grand Isle, Louisiana. In addition, Warren’s knowledge of currents, tides, and winds enabled him to serve as program director on a major industrial research project funded by United Gas Pipeline Company to design a gas pipeline to connect an offshore oil rig to shore in the Atchafalaya Delta region of Louisiana.

Warren joined the faculty of the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey in 1953 where he helped initiate the oceanography program in the Meteorology and Oceanography Department. He taught graduate courses in marine geology and geophysics, supervised student theses and published a number of papers on coastal processes and ocean waves until his retirement in 1981. Before and after his retirement, Warren consulted for many years for the California State Lands Commission, serving as their expert witness in coastal property-boundary disputes. He was a specialist in wave forecasting and an expert on coastal engineering problems, especially beach erosion. He was an Emeritus Director of the California Shore and Beach Preservation Association.

Warren loved nature and was a world traveler. He met the King of Siam at scientific meetings held during the International Geophysical Year, 1957. Warren also met Princess Grace of Monaco and Jacques Cousteau. He spent fifteen months at the Office of Naval Research in London in 1960-1961, serving as the U.S. liaison to European oceanographic institutes. He served as staff oceanographer on the maiden research voyage of Stanford’s schooner, Te Vega, in the Pacific in the summer of 1963 and spent a summer surveying coastal waters off Libya in 1967. He especially loved the West Coast and California, its locales and history. Warren also enjoyed people - his family, friends and everyone he met. He found life “interesting.”

Warren was preceded in death by his daughter, Diana Gibeau of Carmel Valley, California, and is survived by his wife, Dorothy Thompson, and his sister, Virginia Black. He also leaves one daughter, Laurel Hotten of Lawai, Kauai, Hawaii; two sons, Craig Thompson of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and Forrest Thompson of Kirkland, Washington; eleven grandchildren, Celeste, Neil and Eva Gibeau, Kathryn and Alison Hotten, Owen, Rex, Mollie, and Cameron Thompson, Jennifer Duncan and Kathryn Applegate; and two great-grandchildren, Luke and Jacob Duncan.

Private burial will take place at El Carmelo Cemetery in Pacific Grove. Friends are invited to The Little Chapel by-the-Sea in Pacific Grove this Friday, July 15 at 1:30 - 3:00 PM to visit with Warren’s family.