About
The Thompson Four Foundation
Named for Thompson and Bethie Hanes and the four children they sent into the service of their country.
The Foundation exists because a generation’s evidence is being thrown away by people who do not recognize it.
Not destroyed deliberately. Discarded, in the ordinary course of settling an estate, by relatives who cannot tell a campaign ribbon from a costume pin and have no way to find out. What that generation left behind is now mostly in the hands of people two or three removes from anyone who could explain it.
This Foundation begins with one Louisiana family because that is the collection in hand and because the family record is a legitimate door into a far larger history. Thompson Hanes went into uniform for the First World War. Four of his children served after him.
Purpose
Four purposes, for four children.
- 1
Safeguard what they carried
Artifacts of this generation are being lost at speed, not to disaster but to ordinary attrition: an estate sale, a house fire, a grandchild who does not know what the box in the attic is. The Foundation takes custody of what remains of this family's service, conserves it properly, catalogues it, and keeps it together as one collection rather than letting it scatter.
- 2
Tell the story of the Four
Four children of one Louisiana family served their country. Their father had served before them, in the First World War. The Foundation reconstructs that record from documents rather than from memory, publishes what it can prove, and says plainly what it cannot yet prove.
- 3
We will not forget
This family's story is a door into a larger one. The Foundation's educational work is not commemoration for its own sake. Ordinary people built the twentieth century's worst machinery, and ordinary people stopped it. Both halves have to be taught. A third world war is prevented by populations who can recognize the early shape of tyranny, not by populations who are merely moved once a year.
- 4
Serve quietly
The Foundation intends to give generously and to give quietly. Recognition is not the point and is not sought. Where a gift can be made without a name attached to it, it will be. This pillar is deliberately the least documented on this website, and that is the intent rather than an omission.
Editorial standard
How we publish
A memorial website is the most common place in the world for a family story to quietly harden into a fact. Someone writes “he was at Normandy” because that is what an uncle said, and thirty years later it is on a plaque and there is nobody left to ask what was originally meant.
This site is built not to do that. Four rules hold it in place.
1. Every fact carries its evidence
Each entry on a biography page is marked with the strength of what stands behind it. The badges are not decoration — a reader should never have to guess whether a statement rests on a document or on family memory.
- Documented
- Confirmed by a primary record, or by a photograph of one such as a grave marker or service document.
- Partial
- An archival source indicates this, but a discrepancy or a gap remains. Verification is outstanding.
- Testimony
- The subject said this about their own life, heard directly by the person recording it. Stronger than family recollection, because it does not pass through anyone else. Still an account rather than a document, because memory is not a record and cannot be re-examined the way a file can.
- Family account
- Held by the family and consistent with what is known. No record has been located to confirm it. It is published as an account, not as a finding.
- Pending
- A record is known to exist or has been requested. Nothing is published here until it arrives.
2. Discrepancies are published, not resolved quietly
Where two sources disagree, the disagreement goes on the page. A grave marker corrects an earlier research note about a date of death; an archival index gives a middle initial that does not match; a newspaper caption gives a name and an age that cannot both be right. All three are printed. A record that shows its seams is worth more than a smooth one, because a reader can check it.
3. Silence where there is nothing
Anna Beth Hanes was inside the Department of State’s headquarters on September 11, 2001. That is the whole of what her page says about that day. It would be easy to write the rest — the corridors, the evacuation, the smoke across the river — from what is generally known about that morning, and a reader would carry it away as hers. That would be a fabrication of the kind that is almost never caught. She is living, and what she saw is hers to tell.
The same rule governs the gaps. Where the Foundation has nothing, it writes nothing, rather than filling the space with what people of that generation generally did.
4. Images are corrected, never invented
The family display sheet had faded to a heavy magenta. It has been tone-corrected for the web. Nothing has been added, removed, retouched or upscaled by any means, and the processing script is published with the website source so the derivation from original to published image can be checked.
Governance
Standing of the organization
The Thompson Four Foundation is being organized as a Louisiana nonprofit corporation. Application for recognition of exemption under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code is in progress. Contributions are not yet tax deductible.
The board is seated and is published in full. Bylaws, the conflict-of-interest policy, and annual filings will follow on this page once the organization is formed and exemption is recognized. Until then this section states only what is true today.
Board of Directors →Contact
Close a gap in the record.
None of the four service records has been recovered yet. If you knew this family, or you hold a document, a photograph or an artifact, the Foundation would like to hear from you.
Contact the Foundation