Donald Thompson, WEv’67, who held various tech support-related positions at Penn for nearly 70 years, died on February 7, 2026. He was 92. 

Mr. Thompson began work at Penn as a 17-year-old in 1955, serving as a messenger in the development office. In 1958, he became a clerk in the same department, where he served intermittently until 1967. That year, he graduated from Wharton Evening School and joined the staff of Penn’s Institute of Cooperative Research as a duplicate machine operator. Later in 1967, he became a tech records clerk at Penn’s Data Processing Office. Two years later, he became an assistant computer operator in the Data Processing Office, which was renamed University Management Information Services (UMIS) in 1972. Mr. Thompson rose through the ranks in UMIS until 1992, when he joined Penn’s department of Information Systems & Computing (ISC) as a Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) operator. He retired from Penn in 1996, but remained at ISC in a temporary role as a computer tech until he left Penn in 2024. 

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