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

http://www.als-link.org/

ALBANY — Gerald and JoAnn Lawhorn’s 1851 main house isn’t quite nestled among the lushness of its south Georgia habitat — the tall long-leaf pines, the wiregrass, the rows of pecan trees.
From Old Pretoria Road — a two-lane blacktop in Albany spotted mostly with ordinary homes, corn fields and a swath of nut trees — any passerby can catch a view of Cypress Pond Plantation’s 7,334-square-foot house.

Driving past the property, which sits perpendicularly to the road, one can see its grand white columns, a front porch so expansive that even its rocking chairs are uniquely big and the 3,000-square-foot addition that the Lawhorns oversaw.

But the details of the 1,777-acre plantation — the 100-acre natural Cypress Pond that looks unchanged since the Lower Creeks would have fished on it hundreds of years ago; the fertile grounds for hunting quail, dove, duck, turkey and whitetail deer; the dog kennels, sports park and five guest residences — can be best observed on a lazy stroll through the property.

Some would say that Cypress Pond Plantation, on the market for $21 million, isn’t a bad deal at all.

“It’s a premier time for selling these properties,” said Will Wingate, a senior associate with Orvis/Cushman & Wakefield, Ranch and Recreational Properties.

Most of the prospective buyers, Wingate explained, “will be successful businessmen or have families. They may want to add to their collection.”

People who buy properties such as Cypress Pond, Wingate continued, would fly into Albany on a aircraft worth more than the plantation and would likely make a cash purchase.

They’ll fly fish in Montana one season, he said, and shoot quail in Southwest Georgia, world capital of the gentlemen’s sport, the next.



In his trophy room — where two Alaskan brown bears Gerald Lawhorne shot are frozen in mid-motion and a wood carved, green-cloth snooker table once belonging to England’s King Edward VII makes its presence — Lawhorn lays back in his chair, unable to communicate but for a few grunts, the intent in his eyes and a computer-generated voice that announces his messages after he types them on his Erica keyboard.

“This is a great place to be with God’s wonderful creatures,” Gerald offers of the sprawling property. “It’s a historical environment for Georgia.”

The plantation was in part intended as a home base for family gatherings and sporting events with friends and business associates.

“That was one of the main reasons Gerald fell in love with the plantation,” said JoAnn, whom Gerald married in 1995. Their adult children were married at Cypress Pond. “We’ve had plenty of family reunions and birthday parties. It’s a place to come home to.”

Gerald oversaw the purchase of about $4 million in antiques that match the period of the home. Those include a smooth, natural-stone statue, furnishings, draperies, accessories and art. The trophy room is more 1890s.

But while Gerald can still appreciate his home’s history and the land’s character, there’s a significant part of 21st-century plantation life in which he can no longer partake.

In June 2005, the avid sportsman was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gherig’s disease, although Gerald prefers the term “ALS challenge.”

The illness attacks nerve cells and debilitates muscles, trapping its victim in his body as the abilities to walk, speak, eat and eventually, to breathe, fade.

What was once a playground for Gerald will one day help fund outdoor experiences for millions of young men: Profits from the plantation’s sale, Wingate said, will benefit the Boy Scouts of America, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to prepare the youth to make ethical and moral decisions.

“Aunt Gervaise, my den mother, introduced her eight Cub Scouts to God and Jesus,” Gerald communicates.

The plantation, Gerald writes, “is an investment for the Boy Scouts and God. ... We are maximizing our giving to God; he owns it anyway.”

“Jesus, family and Boy Scouts!” the computer says.

“That’s the order,” JoAnn chimes in.


In Southwest Georgia, heart of the 2nd Congressional district — the state’s poorest — there remain a handful of antebellum homes and plantations, most of them passed down through the generations.

Broker Wingate himself grew up in nearby Lax on Willowin Plantation, on the market for $9.5 million.

Near Cypress Pond is the Olin family’s Nilo Plantation and one owned by the Mellons, whose namesake institutions include Pennsylvania’s Carnegie Mellon University, among others.

In neighboring Terrell County, Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited Brands, which today includes Victoria’s Secret, enjoys his plantation while Vice President **** Cheney is known to come down for game hunting.

But the Lawhorns’ situation is unique, said Wingate, because Gerald is a self-made millionaire who didn’t grow up in the type of environment he’s come to appreciate.

“Dirt road in Sylvester,” types Lawhorn by using his right-hand mouse to click on the letters glaring off his computer monitor.

Gerald, a graduate of Worth County High School, founded PetroSouth, a retail gasoline operation with more than 300 fuel centers. Gerald still owns the company, which holds the title to Cypress Pond. JoAnn is graduate of Pelham High School in Mitchell County.

After Cypress Pond gains new owners, the pair will retreat to the new home it’s building in Northwest Albany.

Although JoAnn admits that the new home “will be more downscaled” — “This would be hard to to,” she said — the Lawhorns’ place won’t be hard to find. It’ll be the one whose Ford van license plate proudly reads “Scouter.”

http://www.albanyherald.com/stories/20070812n4.htm