Although Thompson Hospitality, one of the largest black-owned businesses in the United States, is a far cry from the hog farm, the young CEO's success is firmly rooted in the Windsor soil. "I would do the produce business in the summer and fall and use the cash to buy grain to feed my hogs through the winter," he said. A few years later, Thompson sold the hogs and paid for four years of tuition at Hampden-Sydney. The summer after his freshman year, without a business of his own to come home to, Thompson took a job in a hometown hardware store, where he was not allowed to use the cash register because he was black. "One day my boss told me, 'Don't think. Just do what I say,'" Thompson recalled. "I knew at that moment that I would be my own boss." That same summer he got the rights to run concession in a local baseball park and operated the stand in the evening after leaving the hardware store. The stark contrast between the two jobs only solidified what Thompson already knew-he was a businessman.

Those early experiences yielded some distinct advantages when Thompson graduated. His sights were on UVA's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, but competition was tough and the school wasn't taking recent graduates. Thompson was able to convince them that his endeavors in Windsor qualified as significant business experience, and he enrolled as the youngest student in his class.

After his first year, Thompson was selected to participate in Marriott's "fast-track" program for MBAs interested in restaurant management. After finishing Darden, he was hired as an assistant manager in one of Marriott's Roy Rogers restaurants. "I was making an MBA's salary, but I was flipping burgers," he chuckled. Thompson charged through the ranks and, after nine years, was vice president of operations for the East Coast Division of Host Marriott.

When the company began spinning off restaurants, Thompson saw his chance. He negotiated a highly leveraged buyout of 31 Big Boys, which were to be converted to Shoney's. Thompson had always promised his dad that when he had his own company, it would be a family business. He quickly brought his sister, Benita, on board and hired his brother Fred, then a presidential assistant to Ralph Rossum at Hampden-Sydney College, as chief administrative officer.

Despite the idyllic setup, things were off to a shaky start. Customer demand for Shoney's was waning. Then the Blizzard of '93 struck and Thompson lost $500,000 in one weekend. A few months later his father passed away. In the throes of disaster and having lost his confidant and role model, Thompson needed to regroup. After a weekend alone, he announced that the company was going to move away from the restaurant business and into contract food services. He immediately found a niche when he started to win contracts from historically black colleges and black-owned companies. Over the next few years, his client roster grew rapidly.

In 1997, Thompson formed a partnership with Compass Group USA-one of the largest food service companies in the country-and formed a new division, Thompson Hospitality Services, L.L.C. The joint venture allowed Thompson to compete with the biggest players in the field. His client list now includes the University of Houston, LaGuardia and JFK Airports, the Cleveland Browns' Stadium, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, and The Washington Post. Meanwhile, the original Thompson Hospitality Corporation still operates a host of restaurants in the D.C. area.

Recognized as the wunderkind of the hospitality industry, he has beaten glacial odds. Unlike contemporaneous success stories in the technology industry, Thompson's startup had to compete with 100-year-old companies. That challenge was not unlike his experience of being one of twelve Black students at Hampden-Sydney, an historically white college. Although Thompson says vocal racists were in the minority, Black students were disrupting a centuries-old paradigm. The College was an extension of the times, and discrimination was a significant factor.

In response, Thompson and the other Black students formed the Minority Student Union, which has a strong presence on campus today, and used the organization to provide support for Blacks in the community. Because the schools in Prince Edward County refused to integrate and were closed for several years in the 1960s, a significant number of the county's African Americans were uneducated. These individuals, many of whom worked at the College, embraced the Black students as their hope for the future. In turn, the Minority Student Union, rather than having parties, channeled their funds back into the community by donating to Black churches and organizations. "It was an inherently positive situation," he said.

Thompson and his classmates also started a chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha, the national Greek-letter fraternity for African Americans. In a show of strategic iconoclasm, the fraternity's goal was to have representation in all major student organizations. Following in his brother's footsteps, Thompson served as Secretary-Treasurer of Student Government. In his junior year, he ran for Student Body President and lost in a third round run-off, only a few votes shy of becoming the first African American to fill the seat (a goal later realized by Maurice Jones '86.)

Despite the difficulties, being in the extreme minority was a positive challenge for Thompson. "Corporate America is still run by white males. And when I was at Hampden-Sydney, I got a degree not only in economics, but also in White culture. That's made me better able to succeed in this environment," Thompson said. "It was a great experience-I wouldn't trade it for anything."