[1] She worked at an Allentown newspaper while completing her bachelor's degree at Moravian College.
[1] Her assignments included the Truman administration and the newspaper's aviation and transportation beats.
[1] She was hired by the Gilcrease Museum to write biographies of artists, including "O. C. Seltzer, Painter of the Old West" and "William de la Montagne Cary, Artist on the Missouri River," which were published by the University of Oklahoma.
She lived in Tulsa for 45 years until 1995, when she moved to Sarasota, Florida with her second husband, T.K.
Thompson met her first husband, the late John Ladner, a U.S. Navy commander from Tulsa, Oklahoma, while working in Washington, D.C.[1] She and Ladner, who later became a Tulsa district judge, moved to Oklahoma shortly after their 1950 wedding.