Everything She Ever Wanted (20 page)

He had tried to explain that to Pat, but she never seemed to

understand; she thought that he would, of course, be declared their

natural heir.
 
Each of his parents' wills had designated Carolyn's

brother, Seaborn Lawrence, as their executor.
 
Walter and Carolyn were

each other's heirs and then they stipulated that, should they die

together, their estate would go to Tom's children.

Item Eight of Walter Allanson's will read: The provisions of this Will

are made for the purpose of omitting my son, Seaborn Walter Thomas

Allanson, completely, due to his disowning of the family and his

failure to support his children, and I figure that his part of my

estate was [already] used [by me] for the purpose of supporting his

children.
 
The trustee and executors are specifically instructed that,

under no circumstances, is he to receive anything from my estate, and

they are to oppose his appointment as Guardian of these children by any

Court whatsoever, and in the event that he should succeed in being

appointed as Guardian, then the trustee is not to pay any funds

whatsoever to the grandchildren or to him as Guardian, but shall retain

the funds until the payment age of twenty five (25) is reached by the

grandchildren.

It was a slap from beyond the grave.
 
Tom had been paying five hundred

dollars a month toward his children's support, and he would dearly have

loved to have them back with him.
 
He had had high hopes that one day

soon he would be able to raise them on the grounds of Kentwood.
 
He had

left their mother in desperation-sick at heart in a loveless

marriage.

Clearly, his father had never forgiven him.
 
The only thing that Walter

had forgotten about was an insurance policy in which Tom was still

named as beneficiary-but Tom wouldn't know about that until months

after his parents had died.

The house on Norman Berry Drive was cleaned and put up for sale.

Despite the horror that had exploded there, it sold rather quickly.

Paul and Harriett Duckett, right next door-and eyewitnesses to the

fleeing gunman-bought it.

None of the financial mopping up mattered to Tom; all he had ever

dreamed of had come true when he married Pat and they lived together at

Kentwood.
 
As it turned out, he had lived with her on that wonderful

spread of land for less than a year; their time as man and wife had

ended in less than two months.
 
Tom would celebrate their two-month

anniversary in court .
 
.

......

... .

being arraigned for double murder.

Their love had burned as white hot as any iron ingot, and now their

lives were as cold and gray as the steel such an ingot might become.

The glory was all gone, and he could not, for the life of him, fathom

why.

part 2.

Seaborn Walter Thomas Allanson.

Tom was born out of time, if not place.
 
He would have made a far more

satisfactory son for his grandfather than he ever had for his own

father.
 
Paw Allanson had never known quite what to make of his son,

the austere and ambitious Walter O'Neal Allanson, and Walter always

seemed to look at his Tommy as an impediment and an irritant.

Actually, Carolyn and Walter had been reluctant parents to begin with,

not thrilled when Carolyn became pregnant in 1942.
 
Both Carolyn and

Walter were only nineteen and he was in the Army Air Corps, serving in

World War I.

Perhaps they had not planned to have any child, and they would never

have another.
 
Carolyn gave birth to Tommy on April 22, 1943, in

Ocilla, Georgia, where Paw and Nona lived at the time.
 
The baby was

very large, a precursor of the size he would be as a grown man.

In their early years, it often seemed to Walter and Carolyn that every

possible obstacle had been placed in their way.
 
Like so many young men

who graduated from high school in 1940, Walter had to go to war.
 
When

the war was over, he came home and went to Georgia State University.

Next, he received his law degree from Atlanta Law School and his

master's in law from John Marshall Law School.
 
Carolyn worked as a

nurse to put him through.

Just when Walter was finally ready to practice on his own, the Korean

War came along and he was called up again.
 
He was over thirty before

he could really begin his life.
 
A decade of his prime years gone, he

was home and in practice in East Point, with offices across the hall

from his high school friend, Al Roberts.
 
Walter and Carolyn had a lot

of catching up to do.
 
Walter worked as a justice of the peace in East

Point from 1952 to 19Sc, and he joined all the organizations that a

young man in a hurry needed: the East Point Masonic Lodge, the Optimist

Club, the American Legion, the First United Methodist Church of East

Point.

Carolyn was the choir director and taught piano to students at home.

One Sunday, it was Walter's turn to teach the young marrieds' Sunday

school class, and he rose and surveyed the group somberly before he

said, "I'm Scotch, I'm stubborn, and I want things my way."

It was a disclaimer, a prelude to his lesson that morning on how

Christians could be all different kinds of people.
 
You could, he

explained, be stubborn or meek or aggressive or a darned fool and still

be a good Christian.

Stubborn was as apt a description of Walter Allanson as anyone could

ask for.

No excuses.
 
No apologies or promises to change.
 
He was who he was.

Carolyn kept on working full-time for Dr. Tucker in East Point, and

things gradually got better and better for them.
 
They made up for all

the wasted years.
 
In March 19S9, Walter and Al Roberts moved into a

larger suite of offices and continued their law practice.
 
They did

well.
 
Walter wasn't a rich lawyer with an estate in Atlanta's

exclusive Haines Manor section, but he made a comfortable living.
 
He

practiced general law: wills, divorces, contracts.

His staff found him almost unfailingly cheerful and pleasant to work

with.
 
He joined the Coast Guard Auxiliary and worked his way up in the

East Point Masonic Lodge No.
 
88 to become a Thirty-second Degree

Mason.
 
He loved boats and he liked to fish but he liked to do it in

solitude, without the nuisance of taking Tommy along From young Tommy's

viewpoint, his father had been either studying or working his whole

life.
 
Indeed, both his parents had worked for as long as he could

remember.
 
Walter was a man who seldom showed emotion.
 
Tommy was

humiliated the few times he tried to relate to him.
 
His father was

closed in and rigid.
 
He had a set way of doing things.
 
His

expectations for his son were just as unyielding.
 
Carolyn Allanson was

warmer, but she deferred to her husband when it came to dealing with

Tommy and in the matter of getting ahead in the world.
 
Their home

wasn't built around the boy; the boy would have to fit in wherever he

could.

It was not surprising that Tommy looked to Paw for the love and

attention he didn't get at home.
 
He spent the happiest days of his

childhood on his grandparents' farm.
 
He was proud when he went into

the feed store with his grandfather and Paw winked at him as he

announced to the clerk, "This is my son, Tommy."
 
He loved to hang

around with his grandfather as they worked with the horses and other

farm animals.
 
The old man and the husky blond boy both loved

animals.

Tommy went to the Harris Street School in East Point until he was nine

and then his parents enrolled him in the Georgia Military Academy in

College Park.

He attended that private and prestigious school until he graduated in

1961.

The military discipline wasn't that different from the rules his father

set down.
 
But between the military academy and the many weekends he

spent with his grandparents on their farm on Washington Road, Tommy

didn't see that much of his parents.
 
He went hunting with Paw, and Paw

cooked breakfast for him.
 
The two of them would scrounge through waste

bins in back of the supermarkets for outdated vegetables to give to the

cows and pigs.
 
They would tease his grandmother when they came home

with their boxes of brown lettuce and mushy tomatoes, saying, "Look

what we brought for supper!"
 
Nona was a pretty, greeneye woman an she

ran the household.
 
Paw let her; in his taciturn way, he idolized

her.

And, like Paw, she loved Tommy and loved having him around.

Paw Allanson was an old-fashioned southern man.
 
He had a fourth-grade

education and he had labored as a steelworker for fifty-five years.
 
He

had lived through the Great Depression and never really trusted banks

again; he salted away most of his cash in hiding places on his

property.

Nona and Paw had bought the property on Washington Road in 1934.
 
The

house on the property in East Point was little more than a shack

then.

But the farm proved to be a canny buy, and as the Atlanta area boomed

over the years, it appreciated many, many times over its purchase

price.
 
Both Walter and his sister jean were expected to work hard

doing farm chores, since their father was often off hafting steel

girders for buildings all over America.
 
They had horses, cows, hogs,

and chickens and there was always work to do in the fields; they sold

their beef, pork, and produce-steel work was sporadic-and the farm took

up the slack in their income.

When Walter was about twelve, he contracted rheumatic fever.