04.Die.My.Love.2007 (6 page)

By 1993, the year they lost the baby, Fred told Daly that he’d come to realize that working was perhaps not Piper’s strong suit. She’d had five jobs in her six years since law school and made a success of none of them. Fred, always the pragmatist, told his friend that he had a quandary. “Piper wanted to stay home, and Fred couldn’t afford that on his UT salary with their cost of living,” says Daly. “He was a little miffed that Piper wanted all her creature comforts and wasn’t willing to work. It didn’t seem to Fred that she couldn’t work, but that she didn’t want to. It bothered Fred.”

For a while Fred solved the problem by taking on consulting work, something he’d in the past avoided to concentrate on teaching and research. That ended when Piper complained he was gone too much and that she wanted him home more with her and the children. That left Fred with even more of a problem. The University of Texas was going through a lean time, and raises weren’t in the offi ng. While his future was potentially bright there, Fred’s attachment to his work, as strong as it was, came in second to his commitment to his family. Convinced he had to make a change, he began circulating his résumé and networking to fi nd a new, more lucrative position. “It wasn’t the money, it was what the money could do for the family,” says Daly. “Fred knew DIE, MY LOVE / 39

Piper wasn’t going to work. He had children and college to save for, a roof to keep over their heads. To Fred it made sense. His mother had stayed home while he and his brother were young, and that’s what Piper said she wanted to do, so he decided to do what he had to do to make that possible.”

By then, in 1994, when the Jablins had been married eleven years, Daly noticed a change in his old friend. As Piper became more extreme, more flighty and disorganized, constantly throwing their lives into turmoil, Daly thought Fred reined himself further in, becoming even more methodical and organized. It was as if to make the marriage work, he was becoming even more of Piper’s opposite.

Fred was presented with an opportunity that year, a tenured slot in the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond, in Virginia, at nearly double his UT

salary. The position had its good and bad points. On the downside, he would be teaching undergrads, no longer groom-ing graduate students to be his protégés. But the school was new, and the first of its kind in the U.S. to grant a degree. Like getting in on the ground floor of organi za tion al communication, that newness offered a certain allure. Fred enjoyed being a pioneer, and this was a second chance to be in at the inception of something exciting.

Later, he would also say that he saw the move as a way to give his family, especially Piper, a fresh start, in a new state, a new city, with new people. It appealed to him that they’d be moving farther away from her family, who in his view brought stress into the marriage. At the University of Richmond, he could make enough to support his family without relying on Piper for help, something he now viewed as a necessity.

Fred took the offer. Home values in Austin had climbed, and he and Piper sold the Westlake Hills house for more than they had paid for it, reaping enough profit to pay up all their debts, including credit card bills. Then they hired a mov-40 / Kathryn Casey

ing van and headed for Virginia. “When they left, we all thought they’d make it,” says Margaret Surratt. “In many ways, they were a really good couple, and they both seemed to love each other and want the marriage to work.”

Years later, Tina would admit that for her the separation was painful. “I never forgave Fred for moving Piper so far away,” she said. “What right did he have to take her and the children from her family?”

Not long after, Chris Daly ran into Piper in Padre Island, Texas, where she was at the Rountree family reunion, frol-icking with Paxton and Jocelyn on the beach. Fred hadn’t come. Chris would always remember watching Piper in the water. “Piper looked so happy, so excited just to be with her children,” she recalls. “I thought that everything must be working out for them, that the move had been good for them. But I never forgot that day when she was pregnant with Paxton, when she sobbed and said she didn’t want to be with Fred. She’d seemed so dark and sad.”

5

Virginia is a conservative state,” a refined man in a blazer and khakis explained one late spring afternoon, sipping iced tea at a round street- side table outside a small café in Richmond’s historic Fan District. It was a peaceful setting, one of gracious old homes and storefronts. Not far away, the state capitol building designed by Thomas Jefferson was draped under canvas, in the midst of a restoration, and tourists prowled the grounds of St. John’s Church, inspecting the gravestones and standing where legend had it that in 1775 Patrick Henry passionately uttered, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

The Powhatan Indians once called this hilly, forested land Manastoh. A deep sense of not just Revolutionary War but Civil War history permeates Richmond, a city that grew out-ward from the banks of the James River. Richmond, after all, was the capital of the Confederacy, proudly attested to by Monument Avenue, a statue-laden boulevard commemorating Southern heroes Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, J.E.B.

Stuart, and Jefferson Davis. When a likeness of African-American tennis great Arthur Ashe, a Richmond native, was added at the intersection of Monument and Roseneath Road in 1996, it caused a furor from both those who argued its presence violated the intent of the landmark and those who said it cheapened Ashe’s memory to honor him among men whose proslavery ideologies had torn the nation apart.

42 / Kathryn Casey

“By conservative, I mean there are things we just don’t talk about here, things it would be impolite to bring up in conversation, like race and infidelity,” the man went on to explain. “But please, don’t confuse that. Not talking about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. If a man or woman has a dalliance, it’s of little consequence. More important is to keep up appearances. We have a sense of Southern pro-priety in Virginia. How one presents oneself is uppermost.”

Those who travel northwest through Richmond eventually enter Henrico County, a half-moon crescent surrounding the northern half of the city, dead-ending on both sides at the James River. In Henrico, the population is predominantly white and prosperous. In this affluent setting, the West End—a patchwork of subdivisions cut out of the thick forest—is among the wealthiest and quietest. It was here, in 1994, that Professor Fred Jablin and his wife of eleven years, attorney Piper Rountree, purchased a red- brick and wood-sided two-story house with shutters, set back from the street, in the thirty-year- old Kingsley subdivision, at 1515 Hearthglow Lane.

Richmond’s West End was a calm place to live, one without the crush of the city. On weekday mornings, fathers and mothers drove off to work, after watching their children board school buses. At the nearby Gayton Crossing shopping center, West Enders shopped for groceries at Kroger or the upscale Ukrop’s, and wine, bakery items, clothing, toys, or gadgets at small specialty stores. In the local Starbucks, customers queued up for morning lattes, half-cafs, and mochas and talked neighborhood news, their children’s soccer teams, and school events. Occasionally the subject turned to more private matters, including what they saw or heard happening at the houses next door.

At first glance the Jablins with their two young children—

Jocelyn, five, and Paxton, two—fit in well. From the outside, DIE, MY LOVE / 43

they were a picture perfect family, with a house full of bookcases, couches, lamps, and all the latest appliances. They installed a dark oak table with a sideboard in the narrow dining room, and Piper turned the bonus room—a converted, attached one-car garage—into a craft and sewing room with an aquarium. Fred claimed a room built into the detached garage as an office/workshop. In the large, treed backyard, Fred planted a cutting from his grandmother’s favorite rose-bush, as he had at each of his homes. With his Ford Explorer and her brand new Chrysler Voyager minivan in the driveway, they appeared a happy family. Perhaps, at least in the beginning, they were just that.

“At first, they seemed like a really good couple,” says a neighbor. “Fred was smart and successful, excited about his work. The two kids were darling, nice kind of quiet kids.

But then there was that Piper thing. From the beginning, she never fi t in.”

“Piper was this petite woman with blond highlighted hair.

The rest of the moms wore khakis and loafers, but she wore skintight jeans and cowboy boots,” says another neighbor.

“She was out there, flamboyant. Everyone noticed her.”

Some neighbors found the difference in Piper a welcome change. “My husband said, ‘At least she’s not just another typical West End Southern belle,’” says a neighbor. “I wasn’t insulted. I knew what he meant. Piper, well, Piper was . . .

different.”

In the mornings, Fred drove off to work at the University of Richmond, a fifteen-minute trek through the woods on winding residential streets. The campus was breathtaking. Founded by Baptists in 1830 as a men’s seminary, it had been moved to the shores of Westhampton Lake just after the turn of the next century, on the site of an abandoned amusement park. With 360 acres of forest and rolling hills, the university hired Ralph Adams Cram, an architect who’d designed major buildings at 44 / Kathryn Casey

Princeton and West Point, and the result was a school that exemplified Cram’s “collegiate gothic” style.

At times the school had been in fi nancial turmoil, nearly closing or selling off to the state of Virginia, but UR’s alumni had always come through, as in 1969 when E. Claiborne Robins, a 1931 graduate whose family’s pharmaceutical company marketed the cough medicine Robitussin, gifted the school with what was then a staggering sum: $50

million. Ironically, A.H. Robins pharmaceutical, which also manufactured the Dalkon Shield, would later fall victim to a decade of litigation and eventual bankruptcy. By then, fueled by the gifts of Robins and others, UR had one of the largest endowments in the nation: in 1994, when Fred Jablin arrived, approaching $1 billion. Most of the students came from East Coast families, and the costs of attending were $30,000 per student per year. For qualified students who couldn’t pay, the university had ample funds for grants and scholarships.

The Jepson School, where Fred signed on, began under similar circumstances, funded by a $20 million gift from Bob Jepson, an alumnus and corporate turnaround specialist, who wanted to start a leadership school and gave the university the funds to realize his dream. The Jepson School opened in 1992, the year the University of Richmond hosted presidential debates pitting the first George Bush against Ross Perot and a charismatic Arkansas governor, William Jefferson Clinton.

The Jepson faculty had impressive credentials. In Jepson Hall, with its arched bell tower, Dr. Joanne Ciulla, one of the school’s founding professors, had an office on the fi rst floor, directly next to Fred. She had a Ph.D. in philosophy from Temple University and had come to UR from the Harvard Business School and the Wharton School. At UR, she taught ethics and leadership. Other faculty examined leadership through the eyes of their diverse disci-DIE, MY LOVE / 45

plines: psychology, religion, government, art, history, and po liti cal science.

For Fred, the Jepson slot had presented itself at just the right time. He’d had other offers that year, but nothing as lucrative. And it held another appeal: Despite Fred’s reputation and accomplishments, there

were other

top-drawer

communications scholars at UT, like John Daly. At UR, Fred was offered what might have taken him a decade or more at UT: an endowed position, the E. Claiborne Robins Chair, a lifelong, guaranteed post, with ample time to do his research. “At the University of Richmond, Fred was a big fish in a small pond,” says Knapp. “That held a certain appeal.”

The benefits weren’t one- sided. The Jepson School had reasons for courting Fred Jablin. “We wanted Fred because of what he’d done for organization al communication, research that used meticulous standards,” says Ciulla. “Leadership was also a new field, and it needed that discipline.”

The school’s mandate was to study leadership and to teach students what they needed to know to lead. Students applied as juniors, and the competition was tough, with 150 vying for sixty openings.

At first, Fred’s adjustment to working with undergradu-ates was a difficult one. But before long he settled in and enjoyed the change, teaching classes in not only communication and leadership, but collaborating with other faculty members to develop classes in “Art and Leadership” and

“History and Theories of Leadership.”

In many ways the Jepson School was a good match for Fred Jablin. He was a man who believed in rules, and it was an institution that studied morals and ethics. Quickly, his office, Jepson 242, filled with framed drawings by Paxton and Jocelyn, and photos of Piper and the children. Shelves strained under his collection of books, and stacks of papers covered his desk, shelves, file cabinets, and even the fl oor. In 46 / Kathryn Casey

the spring, pink and white azaleas bloomed on the campus, and in the fall the leaves turned the surrounding forest a brilliant scarlet and gold. As the years in Virginia passed, Fred’s office and the University of Richmond must have seemed a logical place to him, a refuge where people treated each other with respect.

All was not as tranquil at the Jablin house hold at 1515

Hearthglow Lane.

“The West End is a beautiful place,” says one of the Jablins’ neighbors. “You look around at the nice houses and you think people must be happy. But sometimes, they aren’t.”

In the beginning, Piper and Fred appeared, at least to neighbors, to slip naturally into their respective roles. In the mornings, Fred drove off to work and Piper made fresh bread for the family and even baked homemade biscuits for her dog.

While he was at the university, her days were spent playing tennis, at the children’s activities, and volunteering at their schools, especially when it came to art class. Throughout their years in Virginia, Piper would tutor her own children, working with them with their art, giving lessons to Jocelyn’s Brownie scout troop. “Every year the Jablin kids would get a ribbon at the school art competition,” says one neighborhood mom.