Policeman Ben
Fall foliage, football crowds, tailgating, and Ben Thompson coincide every fall in Hanover. It has been 40 years since Ben began directing traffic for all of Dartmouth's home football games, and he has missed just one or two. There has been only been one accident during that entire span, when a DWI student rear-ended another car on Main Street.
His uniform is pure 1950s. Elegant, trimmed with gold braid and brass buttons, it makes him look seven feet tall. The man inside that uniform is pretty impressive too. Benjamin Thompson Jr. was born and raised in Medford, Massachusetts. He joined the navy in 1946 and spent the next eight years sailing the seas from Antarctica to the Mediterranean to Korea to, well, Hanover. The first five years were on the carrier U.S.S. PhilippineSea. The last three were in Crosby Hall, where he handled supply and fiscal assignments for the NROTC. He freelanced with the Hanover police as a special officer, working dances and patrols and, starting in 1953, home-game traffic.
Though he never matriculated he did take some courses mostly economics. Because he was registered as a special student he was allowed to pledge Sigma Chi. Some years later he was appointed to the fraternity's board and once served as its chairman. In the meantime he met and married a medical technician from Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital, with whom he had four children. He left the navy in 1954 and was a fulltime Hanover cop until 1964 when he became chief of police in Lebanon. Then he was appointed to the Governor's Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and later did staff work for a congressman and for Sen. Norris Cotton. He also served as a Hanover selectman for nine years, but admits his rockribbed conservatism was frequently frustrated in the town's libera environment. Since 1981 Ben has been a hearings examiner for the State of New Hampshire Department of Safety. Every Wednesday he sits in the Hanover district court, handling other districts on other days.
But as game time approaches Ben Thompson takes over the Inn corner resplendent in navy blue and shiny brass. Hanover Police Chief Kurt Schimke says Ben isn't just a colorful tradition, he is an institution. And maybe the game couldn't go on without him. The damn thing is, Ben never gets to see it.
