Thom celebrated his 21st birthday on the day after Thanksgiving in 1984 in the Short Street Tap and Grill in Chapel Hill. Normally packed with college students like himself, the undergraduates who had back-homes had gone there. The bar was populated that night with grad students who now called Chapel Hill home, and recent graduates who had made Chapel Hill their home.
Thom was an about-to-be graduate who had chosen to stay near campus over the holiday and so for the first time in his life, would not be with family at Bellemont on Thanksgiving. The break seemed a natural part of his gradual break from Bellemont, he thought. He also thought that he had not left home behind as much at it had left him.
Having never really had a mid-life crisis, his father, Benjamin, did not understand at first when Karla asked for a divorce because she wanted to open a spa in Panama City, Florida. She was 46 and ready to do something different and far away from Bellemont. With Thom just a year away from finishing high school once Benjamin thought about it, he too was ready to do something different, but didn’t know what exactly. One thing he did to initiate some change in his life was to simply. Over the next couple of years he gradually sold off all the family’s business interests except for Sagefield Cotton. He rolled all the proceeds over into a retirement package for himself and a trust for Thom.
Then, after four years of living alone Benjamin realized he liked it and wanted to continue as a bachelor, and not in Bellemont. He moved out to live in River Hollow a retirement community on the Cape Fear River north of Lillington. He didn’t play golf or attend many of the socials, but he enjoyed the absence of responsibly he felt there, and was happy enough to sit on his porch and watch the reflection of forgotten dock pylons in the dark waters of the river.