CORE | Coalition for Residential Education

Marshall Thompson

Success is an ambiguous concept. With no one universally prescribed way to measure it, success can mean a variety of different things to people. For some people, success means acquiring lots of money. Others would say it is all about leading a happy, fulfilled life. Marshall Thompson believes that success is all attributed to, and measured by, the goodness and generosity of the people you choose to surround yourself with. This may just seem like a humble opinion, but once you hear Marshall’s story, you will realize how truly remarkable it is.

A few months ago, I set out to gain some insight into the perspective of one of the many residential education success stories that I had heard so much about. To this end, it was suggested that I meet Marshall Thompson, an alumnus of the Virginia Home for Boys. After reading an article about him in a local paper, I decided to make the trip down to Richmond to meet him. I expected a good conversation, but did not anticipate that I would be so thoroughly impressed by Marshall’s insight and wisdom that seem well beyond his years- Marshall is only 22.

What I discovered in Marshall, is not only what I believe to be a model “success” story for a residential education program graduate, but also one of the most amazingly resilient and inspiring people I have ever met.


Marshall Thompson was born in Richmond, Virginia to a drug-addicted mother and a father who would soon disappear. Surrounded by violence, mental illness and drug-abuse, Marshall spent his formative years living in the housing projects of Richmond, his family supported by welfare. 

“I had seen it all,” he remarks about his early childhood. He had been witness to everything from knife fights to drug deals, and had watched his mother overdosing on drugs, spend time in a mental institution, and eventually lose all ability to care for her children. (Marshall’s sister went to live with his grandmother, but due to a long-standing resentment toward young Marshall, this was not an option for him). 



He was taken to his first foster home at age ten. Adding salt to some substantial wounds, the family turned him out in less than a year, choosing a weekend vacation to Atlantic City over the boy. “I sure hope they had a good time,” Marshall sarcastically quipped.



The second go-around in foster care proved to be better than the first. “They were truly good people,” he says of them, “but after a short period of time there (a little over a year) my time there was up. Social services decided that it was time for reunification with my mom. So I went back with my mother. But she was still the same way she had been before; nothing had changed. She was still abusing drugs; the only difference was that I was two years older.” He was in the ninth grade, and all but stopped showing up to class. He estimates that he missed in excess of forty days of school that year. And after meeting him, I can say with a great deal of certainty that it was not for lack of ability. “My home life was just not cutting it.”

It was then, at the tender age of 14, that Marshall decided that he “needed something different, something better.” If he was to make a better life for himself, he could no longer remain with his mother.

What he did next was a true testament to Marshall’s intelligence and resilience. 

Without any adult guidance, he took the initiative to get on the phone and call his social worker to discuss his options. He learned of the Virginia Home for Boys, and decided that it was to be the place that would help him get out the mess he was in at home. I doubt he knew then just how much the program would mean to him. 

“I called up the Boys Home, and I was told to have my mother sign a release form. Unfortunately, I don’t really think my mother knew what was going on at that time; she was so caught up with drugs. I think she realized that I would be better off somewhere else, so she signed the forms, and I got to start my new life.” 



Shortly after arriving at the Boys Home, Marshall’s grades took a drastic turn towards straight A’s, he began to forge relationships with people he still considers to be family to this day, and his dream of a better life was playing itself out. “I realized that what I needed was just a safe place to live so that I could grow,” he says of the transformation he made while at VHB. 

While Marshall was establishing himself at the Boys Home, his mother was cleaning up her act back home. “I’d see my mother every couple weekends or so. And over time, things had gotten much better between us- my mother had sobered up and I was thriving at the Boys Home.” 



Remarkably, rather than resent his past situation, as I would expect most anyone who has gone through something that traumatic to react, Marshall instead thinks of how the ordeal effected his mother. He selflessly says, “it is quite possible that my mother was able to get sober because she didn’t have me to care about at home.” The fact that after all he has been through, he is so capable of forgiveness is truly admirable. “You know, sometimes time does heal wounds,” he so wisely says.

With a growing appetite to learn, and a new perspective on life, Marshall graduated from the Virginia Home for Boys at the top of his class with a 4.6 GPA! Marshall was awarded a full scholarship to William and Mary, and earned a degree in engineering last spring. 

One of the most interesting and ironic stories about Marshall’s college experience, is that the first person he befriended in his freshman dorm, was a young man who had spent his school years at a prestigious boarding school. Although clearly from two different worlds, the two connected because of the boarding experience. “Everyone else was crying for their mommies, but we were both veterans to the boarding life.”

Upon graduation, Marshall went back to VHB, this time to work. Living in an apartment on-campus, Marshall is employed as “Special Projects Coordinator” with the school. He juggles his job with a rigorous Web Programming graduate program at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), which he just started in the fall. 

At the time of our interview in June, CORE was in the midst of re-designing its Web site. Realizing that he could help, Marshall offered his programming expertise toward the project free-of-charge. He told me that he would only do it for “humanitarian points.” The entire project was completed within weeks. 



Recently, Marshall was presented with the “Outstanding Media Presentation” award at a conference sponsored by The National Association for Education of Homeless Children and Youth (NAEHCY). Marshall received the award for recognition of his work programming the Project Hope website, which he worked on at William and Mary, and still maintains. In addition to getting the award, Marshall was also invited to speak at the conference. As a result of his speech, Marshall has been asked by many institutions and organizations to make upcoming speaking engagements.

Overcoming adversity to become a Web site guru, true humanitarian, and now, public speaker, Marshall Thompson’s successes continue to mount. He is, by most any definition of the term, successful; a “success” story. But that is not what he calls success. In ever-humble Marshall fashion, he maintains “my success is actually the success of everybody who has helped me achieve what I have today.”
 
Marshall told me the choices he has made in his life “have all been made out of an instinct to survive,” and a series of subsequent random events. When I suggested that many people often use this reasoning to justify a life of crime, and that his survival instinct could have easily turned him into a statistic, he simply shrugs his shoulders and cracks a smug smile.

He resists the idea that he is just a special person, with an inherent drive to do the “right,” or “good” thing. He says that like success, survival also has many definitions; it can mean many different things. For him, survival was turning a bleak situation into one of incredible promise. 

Marshall maintains that his success is nothing more than the successes of those who have helped him get to where his is. I say that he needs to take more credit.

September 2005