“We’re going to have to pick up the pieces, but we’re going to do it together,” Lois Thomas said. “I’m going to miss him a lot.”
Kevin Thomas was 32 when he was diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer. He had been undergoing chemotherapy treatments since he learned of the malignancy after having stroke-like symptoms while he was on-duty investigating an incident on South Water Avenue in May 2012.
He was rushed to the emergency room, where doctors at Skyline Medical Center found a plum-sized tumor pressing against his brain under the right rear part of the skull.
Kevin Thomas died at home late Thursday night, which was his wish, his wife said. Prior to his burial at Gallatin City Cemetery, a funeral service will be held at Hartsville Pike Church of Christ Monday at 1 p.m. with visitation starting at 10 a.m. until service time. Visitation will also be held Sunday from 1-8 p.m. at Alexander Funeral Home. The community is invited.
“There’s a lot of people that love him,” Lois Thomas said.
The couple had six children between them, four of which they were raising at their home. Lois Thomas called her husband “irreplaceable.” Through Kevin’s death, she hopes to play a part in advancing research to find new treatments for what she called a “horrible disease.”
“Brain cancer is very common and even more on the rise and there’s just four approved drugs to treat it,” she said. “There’s so little progress in the treatment.”
15 years
Thomas spent about 15 years in law enforcement after graduating from Gallatin High School in 1997 and taking a job the following year at the Sumner County Jail. He transferred to the Hendersonville Police Department and attended the Law Enforcement Training Academy in 2000.In 2003, he worked as a school resource officer at Westmoreland and Station Camp high schools for the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office, and in 2010 he was hired with the Gallatin Police Department, where he was a bicycle patrol officer and a member of the SWAT team.
Thomas was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, but in recent months friends and family knew he didn’t have much time left.
Gallatin police Assistant Chief Bill Sorrells said Thomas was like “a family member” and was an “elite officer” – a man who was strong in physical ability but also humble, tender-hearted, and compassionate.
“We were all prepared for it (his death), but you’re never prepared,” he said. “It just leaves you with an empty spot here today. Even though we all knew that he wasn’t going to be back, there was always that hope, and now that it’s happened, it’s just kind of an empty hole.”
Lt. Bill Vahldiek, who worked with Thomas when he began his career at the jail in 1998, remembered his colleague as “a great father” who would drop everything to help someone in need.
“You could call him in the middle of the night and you could be out of gas two states away and he’d be on the way to help you; that’s just Kevin, that’s just the way he was,” he said. “If I ever wanted one of my kids to be like somebody, I’d want them to be like Kevin.”
Source- the tennessean