‘Hotel Goodbyes’ author Stephen Jon Thompson at his book launch Sept. 1, 2024 in Carson City.
Photo by Jessica Garcia.
When Stephen Jon Thompson thinks of his late childhood and the years he spent in Carson City, he thinks of kindness. He never needed for anything growing up in foster care, and that went a long way for him in his journey after a rough start as a boy.
Before that, he had helped to solve a problem of survival for himself and his younger siblings after his mother had left him and his four brothers in a Reno motel room when he was 9. This was the basis for his new memoir, “Hotel Goodbyes,” an account that honors a community’s ability to take care of its own and helps him to recall the gratitude and resilience he recognizes today.
Thompson’s career since then has covered the gamut as a firefighter, blackjack dealer, Assembly candidate and now a technology executive. He works as an executive in human resources and talent acquisition and says he never has been keen on thinking he was different growing up in Reno or Carson City.
“It’s about how you can make a difference in a young man’s life and it’s also a different view on how we can push ourselves when there’s not a lot to go on, but there’s light,” Thompson told the Appeal Sunday during a book launch in Carson City.
“Hotel Goodbyes” is available through preorder and publishes Sept. 10. The book launch in Carson was the second with the first held Aug. 24 in San Jose, where Thompson and his family live now. Thompson took the opportunity to meet with invited guests, some of whom included local educators and coaches he had known previously or had invited as a supporter of the educational system. He began in the sixth grade at Carson City’s Bordewich Bray Elementary School and spent the next six years in Carson schools, he shared with guests while reading a selection from his memoir.
“I’m looking at a lot of you and was in many of your homes,” he observed. “I would walk into many of your homes and open a fridge immediately and see what was in it to eat. I was never bashful, and that’s paid me back in dividends. I have two sons now, and their bill for eating is brutal.”
Thompson is married now to his wife Penelope, and their two sons are Carson and Quincy.
His early experiences in motel rooms in which his mother had left him and his siblings, with the youngest only 1 year old in January 1980, foster homes and a juvenile home in Carson City would take time for Thompson to write. He eventually would be inspired to put words to paper when his own son had a school assignment to record his family history. His own friends encouraged him that he had a unique story to tell through his experiences, he told guests at his Carson launch. He had been a ward of the state until he was 18 and said there is always more work to do to help youth in need and that the small, kind things and their payoff in life aren’t always immediately seen.
“The way I grew up, the kids didn’t take this road, and I just thought the lessons I learned here from Carson helped me,” Thompson told the Appeal. “But Carson helped me, it’s a small community, people didn’t see me so different, and that helped me.”