In 1964, Thompson joined the staff of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia at the invitation of then-professor and director Lamar Dodd. He became a professor emeritus at the university upon his retirement in 1983. The school's sculpture studio was named in Thompson's honor. He was a member of the Southern Association of Sculptors in Columbia, South Carolina, and was elected to associate member status in the National Academy of Design in 1977 and elevated to the status of academician in 1993. He used a wide array of media for his art, including such traditional materials as stone, wood, and bronze, as well as more experimental media like polyester resins. Due in part to his expert use of so many different materials, Thompson won an honorable mention From juror Max Weber in the Rhode Island Artist Annual exhibition in 1949, merit awards at a series of Callaway Gardens sculpture exhibitions from 1966-69, purchase awards throughout the Southeast in the mid-1960s, and notably the Albert Christ-Janet Award for Creativity in Research in 1982.
Perhaps Thompson's best known work is the Andersonville Memorial, a nine-foot-high bronze sculpture that stands on the grounds of a prisoner-of-war camp, now Andersonville National Park. The sculpture was commissioned by the Georgia Natural Resources Commission to commemorate lost prisoners of all American wars, including the Civil War. Thompson's sculptures have become an enduring part of Georgia's culture: he executed bronze portraits of such University of Georgia notables as Lamar Dodd, ecologist Eugene P. Odum, and tennis coach Dan Magill, as well as of Georgia senator Richard B. Russell, whose 14-foot bronze sculpture still stands in Atlanta on the State House grounds, philanthropist Robert W. Woodruff for the Woodruff Arts Center in Atlanta, and others. Thompson's work is found in church and private collections worldwide, as well as in the collections of the Georgia Power Company, the Georgia Art Commission, the Columbus Museum of Fine Arts in Ohio, and others.
He died in Athens, Georgia, on July 13, 1995.