Got a spare $21 million?
Illness forces PetroSouth founder to sell South Georgia plantation

Gerald Lawhorn in 2005 was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease.


By KEVIN DUFFY
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/05/07

Albany — Flanked by two glowering bears he shot in Alaska 30 years ago, millionaire businessman Gerald Lawhorn lies in a reclining wheelchair in his paneled den, unable to talk.

The founder of PetroSouth, a chain of 290 gas stations, used to live at full tilt, traveling, hunting, buying property and antiques, and giving to the Boy Scouts, a passion of his since childhood

But that all changed June 6, 2005, when Lawhorn was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease. It stopped him cold in his tracks.

ALS destroys nerve cells and incapacitates muscles. Patients lose the ability to walk, talk, eat and, finally, to breathe.

Lawhorn no longer can enjoy his extraordinary home, called Cypress Pond Plantation, a 1,777-acre spread in South Georgia. So PetroSouth, the title holder, has put it on the market.

The property includes an antebellum house expanded to more than 7,000 square feet, a 100-acre pond dotted with centuries-old cypress trees, and quail-hunting habitat teeming with wildlife.

It can be yours — if you've got $21 million.

"Twenty-one million is a lot of money to you and me, but the buyer most likely is going to pay cash for it," said Will Wingate, a broker with Orvis/Cushman & Wakefield, Ranch & Recreational Properties. "The airplane he flies in on is going to cost more than this place."

A visitor asked Lawhorn what he loves about the plantation. Using his right hand, he carefully navigated a mouse, choosing letters on a video screen to build his answer.

When he finished, a mechanical voice intoned over a loudspeaker: "That it hopefully forever will be a wonderful environment for God's great creations."

Lawhorn bought Cypress Pond in 1998 as a hunting refuge for family and friends. Hunting was ingrained in him as a boy growing up in Sylvester, between Tifton and Albany.

"He'd always go out and bring back a bird for our kitty named Betsy," Pat Lawhorn, his sister, recalled.

At 15, Lawhorn managed his first gas station, one belonging to his father's chain. Later, after earning an advanced business degree from the University of Georgia and teaching math for a year, he started OK Oil. That grew into Griffin-based PetroSouth, now owned by three others besides himself.

Lawhorn also founded, and later sold, Buypass the System, a company that in the 1980s made credit and debit transactions more convenient.

"Gerald's talent is he got all the brains in the family," his sister said.

Cypress Pond was Lawhorn's retirement project. He added land, built docks, doubled the size of the 1851 house, and furnished it with rare antiques.

"Once you entered the gate, it was Gerald's creation," his wife, JoAnn Lawhorn, said.

The furnishings include a 19th century bedroom suite made by John Henry Belter, and an ornate snooker table that belonged to King Edward VII, who ruled England at the start of the 20th century.

Quail hunting is "the king sport," according to Kevin McGorty with Tall Timbers, a nonprofit group that helps conserve plantation land. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor hunted quail, he said, as did Presidents John F. Kennedy and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Vice President **** Cheney and singer Jimmy Buffet are known to pursue the birds.

Mega-rich plantation owners include developer Tom Cousins and Charles Loudermilk, the founder of Aaron Rents. Coca-Cola magnate Robert W. Woodruff established the 29,000-acre Ichauway Plantation south of Albany in the 1920s. Today it is home to an ecological research center.

For the Lawhorns, however, illness has spoiled what was once paradise.

"It won't ever be the same," said Jeff Lawhorn, Gerald's only brother, who also lives on the plantation. "I can't enjoy it. I really can't."

Quick quail
During a tour of Cypress Pond, Wingate pulled his SUV off an unpaved road and stopped near a pecan tree. Covey of quail, he said.

He wanted a photographer to catch them in flight, so he bounded out of the truck and rushed the tree. The two birds took off as if launched, too quick for the photographer.

Wingate grew up on the Willowin quail plantation in Lax, east of Albany. Most of it, too, is for sale. The price: $9.2 million.

"This market is extremely strong," said Jon Kohler, owner of Jon Kohler & Associates of Tallahassee. "In fact ... we have a greater number of buyers in the 2,000-plus acre range than in the 500-plus acre range.

"Prices of plantations are continuing to appreciate. But the property must be high quality."

In 2004, a 4,900-acre plantation near the Florida border sold for $24 million. A 1,710-acre ranch in Dahlonega, in North Georgia, is listed for $55 million.

On the plantation tour, Jeff Lawhorn stopped his SUV on a trail strewn with flint fragments left by Creek Indians, who made tools and arrowheads near the pond.

The landscape is longleaf pines and wire grass, and looks much the way it did when Hernando De Soto explored the area in the 16th century.

In the winter, visitors and dogs climb onto Cypress Pond's "bird buggy," an open-air vehicle built on a Chevy Suburban chassis, to hunt.

They listen for the bird's distinctive two-tone whistle. Pointers tromp through the grass to locate the quarry. Labrador retrievers and English spaniels flush them.

The pleasure comes not just from downing the birds. "It's watching the dogs work. It's being able to socialize with your hunting party," Wingate said. "You tell stories. You do business."

In February 2006, nine months after the grim diagnosis, Gerald and JoAnn Lawhorn, and his daughter, Leslie Neely, made a video at Cypress Pond Plantation to help other ALS families.

A gift to Scouts
"There is life after diagnosis and we plan to live that life as best we can," Lawhorn tells viewers, his words slurred by the disease. "I'm not going to be concerned with what I can't do."

JoAnn says: "We live in the moment; we will live in the day. Tomorrow is nothing to fear."

The video is on a Web site Lawhorn created, www.als-link.org. Terminal disease has become his final project.

All profits from the plantation sale will go to the Boy Scouts, Lawhorn said. The lavish furnishings will be sold separately, at cost. They're just "things," he said, not as important as family, the Scouts or Jesus.

He signaled his caregiver, Frank Sinatra Backey, who then placed three Jesus medallions on Lawhorn's chest.

"He wants you to reach for them," Backey said. Reach for Jesus.

As his guests took the medallions, Lawhorn mustered what little muscle control he has left and gave a thumb's up.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/bus...tion_0805.html