LUMBERTON — Through his football career playing a physical position, Donnell Thompson rarely missed a game due to injury. In college, story goes, he never once missed study hall. After his playing career, he took advantage of his opportunities to become a successful businessman.

“Great kid, hard worker, heck of a leader,” said Tommy Thompson, who was Donnell Thompson’s high school position coach at Lumberton. “You knew he was going to be a success because of his personality and his drive, his want to. … He was going to do the proper thing to do to be successful. And he could overcome anything. He was just a great personality, great leader, everybody loved him; he was just top of the line.”

After Thompson died Tuesday at age 65, coaches and teammates are remembering not only a great football player but a great man.

“He was a great kid, I enjoyed coaching him,” said Paul Willoughby, who was Lumberton’s head football coach from 1976-80 and coached Thompson. “Of course, he grew up pretty fast. All those kids looked up to him, of course, for those years. … You hate to see those guys that you end up coaching going before you do. But he was a good one, good business guy, good family man, tried to take care of his folks.”

Thompson is survived by his wife, Deborah, his mother, Berthel, two brothers, four children and seven grandchildren. A celebration of life service will be held Saturday at 2:30 p.m. at St. Joseph AME Church in Durham.

Origins in Lumberton

Donnell Thompson began playing football at the recreational level in Lumberton around the fourth grade, playing for coach Bob Osterneck, who was a tremendous influence on his life.

“Bob Osterneck influenced me more than anyone else in Lumberton,” Donnell Thompson said in a story published in The Robesonian on Dec. 11, 1980. “He coached me in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades. He always stayed behind me and kept me pretty straight. … My mother also encouraged me to go to school. She always wanted me to go to college.”

“(Osterneck) gave him some guidance, gave him an opportunity, and a lot of kids don’t get that opportunity,” said William Freeman, who was part of Lumberton High’s class of 1977 alongside Thompson. “He got that chance, and he maxed it out.

After playing multiple sports as a young athlete, by the ninth grade Thompson focused solely on football, feeling that the physical gifts that would ultimately produce a 6-foot-4, 270-pound frame were best suited to the gridiron.

“I’ve always been bigger than the guys in my class,” Donnell Thompson said. “I was pretty fast and could outrun my smaller friends. That told me I had some athletic ability. It was the one talent God gave me and I wanted to pursue it. I feel that you have to do what you do best.”

He showcased a strong work ethic early, driving a school bus while he was still in high school, Freeman said. And there was nobody bigger or better on the football field for the Pirates; Thompson’s future would be as a defensive lineman, but he played both sides of the ball for the Pirates, playing fullback on the offensive end. Thompson earned a spot in the Shrine Bowl after his senior season in 1976.

“Donnell, he was just one of a kind,” Tommy Thompson said. “I coached for almost 45 years, and every now and then if you’re lucky you get one player that you just know, attitude-wise, ability-wise, just everything, that he’s going to be a success. Donnell was exactly that. He was absolutely the top of the line.”

“He was a man amongst boys at that time, he was very special indeed,” Freeman said. “Commanded double and triple teams, and they still didn’t do any good. He made plays.”

Donnell Thompson’s dream school was the University of North Carolina — so much so that it was “well known” during his recruitment that all other suitors were fighting a losing battle trying to court him to play at their school.

“I had a number of coaches call me during his senior year and I said ‘guys, you’re wasting your time,’” Willoughby said. “I remember I had the Southern Cal coach call me one afternoon, and he said ‘I’ll guarantee him he’ll start as a freshman at Southern Cal, if he’ll come to California.’ So I said ‘I tell you what, he’s going to Carolina but I’ll be glad to let you talk to him,’ and I gave Donnell his number and all and told him what he said and he said ‘I’m not interested, coach.’”

Tar Heels and Colts

In Chapel Hill, Donnell Thompson played for one of the best Tar Heel teams of all-time, winning the 1980 ACC championship with an 11-1 overall record. He played alongside Lawrence Taylor, who went onto a Hall of Fame career in the NFL, but earned his own accolades as a third-team All-American.

“At that particular time, through the 70s, we had not had a big-time player to step up on that level. So it was a big boost in everybody’s excitement level, and of course there’s a lot of Carolina fans in Robeson County,” Willoughby said. “They had a great ballclub. … It rallied a lot of folks.”

After a strong four-year college career at UNC, Thompson was picked 18th overall in the first round of the 1981 NFL Draft by the Baltimore Colts. He would play his whole career for the Colts franchise, moving with it from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984, and recorded 41 sacks with eight fumble recoveries and one touchdown in 11 NFL seasons before retiring after the 1991 campaign.

“That’s a big deal, for a Black kid to come up from South Lumberton, first round draft pick in the NFL,” Freeman said. “When Tim (Worley) and Jamain (Stephens) went through that … for them to get a first-round pick like that was a big deal. … But he had a humble approach about it because he knew it was work, but at the end of the day he used it as a vehicle for us his life.”

Other local products have made it to the NFL, including Worley, Stephens, Super Bowl champion Vonta Leach, and current Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Kion Smith. Thompson, though, was the first from Lumberton to play on the game’s biggest stage.

“You’ve always got your haters wherever you go, but for us, from the south side (of Lumberton) … when you get a guy that goes in professional athletics and lives and survives for 11 years like he did, Vonta (Leach) the same way, you can only tip your cap to these guys,” Freeman said. “I don’t care what’s in the in between time, in the meantime, if you get from point A to point B and you’re able to get your pension and you can pretty much do what you want to, you can’t do nothing but sit down, tip your cap and shut up, because these guys did it.”

When the North State Journal did a 2020 series called “100 in 100” profiling each North Carolina county’s greatest athlete, Thompson was picked to represent Robeson County.

A successful businessman

Around 1991, when Donnell Thompson knew the end of his NFL career was approaching soon, it was Willoughby who helped start his post-football business career. Thompson went on to be a successful restaurant and hotel franchisee.

“When he got through with Indianapolis, that last year he had already been calling me about some business deals and so forth, so we got started with that, I guess about six months out before he retired,” Willoughby said. “He wanted to go into a McDonald’s business, so we got him lined up in Atlanta, and I guess he stayed in the McDonald’s business for about five years, and he had three or four stores down there and did well.”

Corporate executives are often reluctant to have professional athletes open their franchises, Willoughby said, questioning whether they’re willing to put in the hard work required. For Thompson, that work was never a problem.

“Donnell loved to adventure out into different businesses, and after that he spent some time in the motel business, then he got back into fast foods. He spent some time in Durham, and ended up even doing some down in Lumberton,” Willoughby said, referring to the Checkers location on Fayetteville Road. “He was always a guy that would take a challenge when it came to business.”

“He was a direction for life after football more so than anyone else — at the time, there was no one else, he was the blueprint,” Freeman said.

His career was based on a mantra that people need two things, something to eat and somewhere to stay, Freeman said. Thompson’s career included countless philanthropic acts in the communities where he did business.

“He was a great role model for young people, and he was just, academically, athletically, personality, he was just a great role model for young people, and he continued to be,” Tommy Thompson said. “A lot of people don’t know, doing things for the Boy Scouts, doing things for people that he never got credit for, didn’t want any credit for, that’s just the type of person he was.”

Thompson was living in Durham at the time of his death.

“He was the perfect example of using that football to get that body of work, and he did it,” Freeman said. “He moved from Atlanta to Chapel Hill, back and forth, and it was amazing to watch him evolve as a man; I’m so proud of him.”