The Man in the Meme
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The Man in the Meme
SCN Remembers Vols Super Fan Kevin Thompson
By Shane Gilreath
SCN Contributing Editor
[email protected]
Last week, SCN was contacted about Kevin Thompson. You may not know Thompson by name, but if you’re a Vols fan and have spent any time on social media, you’ve likely seen his face. It’s front and center in a meme that has circulated for years, as Thompson stands in a crowd awash in Kentucky blue, dressed head to toe in unmistakable Tennessee orange. “What in the Rocky Top is going on here?” the meme questions. For Thompson who was described as the world’s biggest Vol fans, the answer was simple – loyalty.
Though the photo feels like it belongs in an SEC museum, Thompson’s story begins a little farther north. He grew up in Cincinnati before eventually settling in Georgetown, Kentucky, less than twenty miles from the mecca of college basketball, Lexington’s Rupp Arena, his cousin, Tim Duncan, told SCN. But Wildcat proximity never swayed his devotion. Kevin’s heart didn’t bleed blue. It was orange through and through.
“He would wear his beloved Orange,” Duncan said, “as shown in this meme, in a sea of blue!”
Family memories paint a fuller picture. Holidays and summers in Cincinnati often meant backyard football games and friendly rivalries. “It was always Kevin and Sam Anderson, another one of Tennessee’s biggest fans, on a team,” Duncan recalled. Even then, the Volunteer spirit ran deep.
Kevin met the love of his life, Hope, and married near a mountaintop in Pigeon Forge. For 23 years, they built a home, raising children, whos many adventures that he never missed cheering on, just as he never missed a chance to cheer for Tennessee. He attended countless Tennessee/Kentucky games, teaching his brand of patriotism to his children. In those big blue crowds, Kevin was easy to find, blazing in orange as bright as sunshine against a clear blue sky.
That one image – the one man in radiant Tennessee orange surrounded by Kentucky blue – will forever consolidate his fandom in college lore. The meme may have made him semi-famous among Facebook users and the loyalist of fans, even catching the attention of Kentucky Sports Radio, but, according to friends and family, it was simply Kevin being Kevin – fearless in his Tennessee loyalty and steadfast in his Vols love.
Those who knew him remember a selfless man who was a husband and father, a man quick to help a stranger, a tinkerer of engines, a lover of road trips and classic cars, and the biggest Vols fan around with a grin as wide as Neyland on a Saturday in October.
For Tennessee fans, Kevin Thompson will always stand as proof that Volunteer orange doesn’t fade, nor abide by state lines, even amongst a sea of rival blue.
