THOMAS, LARRY DEE (1947 ~ ). The following is a biography about Larry D. Thomas. Thomas was approved for burial at the Texas State Cemetery by the Cemetery Committee. The biography was provided by Thomas.
A third-generation Texan, Larry D. Thomas was born in 1947 in the small West Texas town of Haskell. In 1950, his family moved to Midland, Texas, where he lived from 1950 until 1961 when his family relocated to Brownwood, Texas. In Brownwood, he graduated from Brownwood High School in 1965 as a member of the National Honor Society. He then attended Howard Payne University (in Brownwood) on a full-time basis from 1965 to 1967. While attending Howard Payne University, he supported himself through his full-time employment as a district circulation manager for the Brownwood Bulletin newspaper. In 1967, at the age of twenty, he moved from West Texas to Houston, Texas, where he resided for forty-four years until he moved to Alpine, Texas, in 2011.
While in Houston, Mr. Thomas attended the University of Houston on a full-time basis from which he graduated in 1970 with a BA in English literature. During his studies at UH, he supported himself through his full-time employment as a district caseworker for the Harris County Social Services Department in Houston. Deena Kay Thomas, his daughter and only child, was born in 1970. Upon earning his degree, he was drafted into the United States Navy from which he was honorably discharged in December, 1974. During his four years of naval service, he served as a correctional counselor at the U. S. Navy Correctional Center in Norfolk, VA.
In January, 1975, Mr. Thomas obtained employment with the Harris County Community Supervision and Corrections Department in Houston where he worked as an adult probation officer for twenty-three years until his retirement in 1998. For the last fifteen years of his employment at HCCSCD, he was privileged to serve as a branch director responsible for managing a staff of over one hundred adult criminal justice professionals.
During his thirty-one-year professional career in social service and adult criminal justice, although he had to restrict his writing of poetry solely to the weekends, he still managed to publish a large number of poems in respected national literary journals, including but not limited to, the Southwest Review, Poet Lore, Texas Review, Southwestern American Literature, descant: fort worth’s journal of poetry and fiction, Louisiana Literature, and the Concho River Review.
Following his retirement from the criminal justice field in 1998, Mr. Thomas published his first book of poems, The Lighthouse Keeper, in late 2000. From 2000 through 2019, Mr. Thomas published eleven book-length collections of poetry, including As If Light Actually Matters: New & Selected Poems (Texas A&M University Press; Finalist, 2015 Writers’ League of Texas Book Award), and numerous poetry chapbooks, several of which received distinguished prizes and awards. His poetry awards included but were not limited to, two Texas Review Poetry Prizes (2001 and 2004) from Sam Houston State University; two Western Heritage Wrangler Awards (2003 and 2015) from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum; the 2004 Violet Crown Book Award (poetry category) from the Writers’ League of Texas; nomination for the coveted 2007 Poets’ Prize (Nicholas Roerich Museum); and the 2023 Spur Award (poetry category) from Western Writers of America. On April 13, 2007, Mr. Thomas was appointed by the Texas Legislature as the 2008 Texas State Poet Laureate. For his extraordinary achievements in poetry, especially his numerous poems set in Texas, Mr. Thomas received a resolution from the Commissioners’ Court of Harris County, Texas, designating August 21, 2007, as “Larry D. Thomas Day” in Harris County, Texas; a proclamation from the City of Houston, Texas, designating January 27, 2009, as “Larry D. Thomas Day” in Houston, Texas; a proclamation from the City of Midland, Texas, designating October 20, 2007, as “Larry D. Thomas Day” in Midland, Texas; and a proclamation from the City of Odessa, Texas, designating November 14, 2009, as “Larry D. Thomas Day” in Odessa, Texas. On April 18, 2009, Mr. Thomas was inducted into the prestigious Texas Institute of Letters.
Mr. Thomas’s papers are housed at the East Texas Research Center of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas.
