Rest In Peace, Mr Thomas, Ansonia Will Miss You

FILEIt was Penny Marganski’s last day at Scissors, a hair salon near near Main Street she owned for eight years before deciding to close up shop in June 2011.

At one point during the day, George Thomas sauntered by, carrying a small bottle of Dubra vodka, his drink of choice. Marganski told him it was her last day in business.

It wasn’t a happy day.

“He put his bottle of Dubra down, walked up to Big Y and brought me back an ice cream cake,” Marganski said. ​“He was a character.”

Thomas, something of an unofficial ambassador for Ansonia’s Main Street, was found dead Monday morning. He was 59.

His body was found in the parking lot of Ralph Mann and Sons on Main Street by an employee of the business. Police do not suspect foul play.

“It appears as if he was sleeping in the lot and simply didn’t wake up,” Ansonia Police Lt. Andrew Cota said Monday.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said Tuesday that an autopsy revealed Thomas died of blunt head trauma as a result of an accidental fall.

A funeral service for Thomas is scheduled for Friday, Aug. 30 at 10 a.m. at the Bishop Williams Memorial Church in Ansonia. Click here to read his obituary.

Thomas, who said he was homeless, could be seen on any given day walking through downtown Ansonia, often pushing a shopping cart stuffed with anything and everything.

In conversations — with those he knew well, or anyone passing by who would listen — he could be loud, and sometimes obnoxious.

But you had to like him.

The General

Just how well-known was Thomas, who somehow became known as ​“The General?”

Mayor James Della Volpe was driving down Main Street Monday morning and pulled over when he saw a Valley Indy reporter on the sidewalk.

Did he have a complaint about a story, or want to clarify something he had said in an earlier interview?

Nope.

“Did you hear George Thomas died?” he said.

This is how the Twitterverse reacted to Thomas’ death Monday. The article continues below.

[View the story ​“RIP George Thomas” on Storify]

Della Volpe knew Thomas for decades — about the same age, the two were classmates.

“He was a smart kid,” the mayor said.

Their families went back even further.

“His father used to be a mason, and used to do work with my family, and we used to pay them with chickens and eggs when he would do masonry work for us, that’s how far back our families went,” Della Volpe said.

The mayor spent time with members of Thomas’ family Monday morning after hearing of his death.

Thomas worked at the Farrel Corporation for many years before falling on hard times, the mayor said.

Did He Really Just Say That?

In another universe — or perhaps if he had been able to overcome his issues — Thomas might have been an improv performer or a ​“cringe comic.” His mind was quick. He was genuinely funny. And he clearly liked to bust chops.

He was the first person the Valley Indy encountered after the site went live in June 2009.

Thomas was black. He seemed to relish making people — or at least white reporters — uncomfortable with race.

“WHAT UP, WHITE BOY?” he yelled at a reporter looking for details on a stabbing that happened within the Riverside Apartment Complex. ​“WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

It was a disconcerting introduction.

But, after hearing the word ​“Sentinel,” Thomas talked for five minutes about how he delivered the paper as a boy, and all the people he knew who worked in the old Evening Sentinel’s press room on Main Street.

In various conversations with the Valley Indy before his death, he talked about how he jumped out of a hospital window within moments of his birth. Or that he lived under a bridge.

In fact, he was the first person to cross the Maple Street bridge after it was rebuilt.

If you said ​“Hi” to him, he’d stop you, thank you, then talk about the old days in Ansonia, when everyone said ​“Hi” to everyone.

He would needle strangers about race, then put them at ease with a grin that showed he was just kidding.

A few years back he spotted an Ansonia merchant cleaning the sidewalk outside a store on Main Street.

“Oh, it kills me to see a white man being reduced to doing the black man’s work!” he yelled, putting a hand over his heart to show his fake shock.

No, he wasn’t politically correct. It was as if he let people hear the punch line of a joke they didn’t ask to hear.

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Thomas had a drinking problem and ​“was OK with that,” Marganski, the hair stylist, said. He didn’t want help from mental health agencies because he feared being made into a ​“zombie” from medication, Marganski said.

He had lots of brushes with the law. He could wear out his welcome with some merchants, a fact underscored by the many low-level ​“criminal trespass” arrests he had over the years.

Yet even cops said he was a ​“good guy.”

“Everyone seemed to know George,” Cota, the city’s police spokesman, said. ​“He was always good for a long conversation and a laugh when he got your ear.”

RIP George

Anyone who worked on Main Street knew ​“The General.”

He was ​“a good guy with a good heart,” said Bev Tidmarsh, who works at Bennett and Walsh law offices on Main Street.

“He was a staple downtown,” said Michael Carpinello, owner of the Super Softy ice cream truck.

He shoveled snow and took out the trash at Marganski’s hair salon — and no, he never asked for cash, she said.

Gregg Seccombe, of Seccombe’s Men’s Shop on Main Street, said Thomas was an Ansonia icon. Seccombe knew him since childhood.

On occasion, Thomas would come into money, so he’d ask Seccombe to put it in the shop’s safe — then come back every few days to take a few bucks out.

“He was one of those guys that I just cared about. He was a pain in the neck, but he was our pain in the neck,” Seccombe said.

Mark James, the owner of Ansonia Yankee Peddler, remarked how quiet it was Monday morning in front of his store on Main Street without Thomas’ presence.

Thomas always wanted to chat, James said, and had a big heart.

“You what what George did a lot of? George would buy things and give them away,” James said of Thomas. ​“Main Street will definitely miss George Thomas, you can believe it.”

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