FORT MOTTE, S.C. — Sudden, unexpected death throws us off balance in ways the long, withering death crawl rarely does.
Nothing compares to the call in the night — or the knock at the door — and the words that can’t be unheard. Your husband was in a terrible accident. Or your sister’s remains have been found. The violence of the news pales next to the violence that brought someone’s life to an end.
There’s the unthinkable intersection of fate and timing that could have, should have, gone another way but didn’t.
So it was on Saturday night when an extraordinary number of South Carolinians heard and passed along the horrific news that one Tom Hall had died in a fiery crash on his way home from dinner with friends. He had been in Columbia, roughly an hour from his home deep in the agricultural fields of the unincorporated village of Fort Motte. He was supposed to stay in a hotel but wanted to get home to the former plantation house that he and his wife, Amy Peterkin, were renovating.
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The property, named Lang Syne, was once the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Julia Peterkin, a catalyst for many of the changes taking place today, according to Jackie Whitmore, a descendant of the enslaved people who once worked Lang Syne’s cotton fields. By providence or happenstance, I met Whitmore at the wake after the funeral and went on a tour with him of the graveyards of the enslaved.
Follow this authorKathleen Parker's opinionsAmy’s great-grandfather, who married the famous writer, grew asparagus, among other things. Sorting through collections of found items on the back porch of her home, Amy pointed to a rusty implement once used to stack and bundle stalks with string, readying them for market. The gizmo could be adjusted to various sizes of freshly picked asparagus.
Today, adjacent fields hold dry stalks of cotton recently harvested. Driving around this part of the state, just south of Columbia and eastward toward the Lowcountry, you can’t get far without seeing 500-pound bales of compressed cotton sheathed in bright pink or yellow. I’ve stopped more than a few times to get a closer look at these mysterious creatures lined up single file as though they have a destination in mind. Oftentimes, miles of rural roads are flanked as far as the eye can see by “snowballs” — soft white cotton balls just like the ones that come in drugstore wrappers.
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When I drove up to the house Wednesday to pay my respects, the front porch was crowded with friends and family, several hunting dogs and Amy herself, tall and stalwart despite little food or sleep for several days. People roamed the grounds, their faces marked by sorrow as they prepared for what promised to be an epic celebration of Tom’s life after Thursday’s funeral. Inside the house, which resembles a stage set for an earlier era, native son Jimmy Williams, a former MSNBC commentator and close friend of Tom and Amy’s, chopped huge bunches of collard greens for a big-crowd salad. Best estimates were that a thousand people would flock to the 800-acre farm to comfort one another and wonder how such a thing could have happened.
A crowd of an estimated 600,— mostly men, gathered at St. Matthew’s Parish Church — a handsome collection of bow ties, ponytails and bearded men who personified the rugged, gentleman hunter-planter of the South that few outsiders ever get to see up close — gathered to honor Tom Hall. Larger than life, he was a legendary force of fun and fearlessness. His résumé seems too long for one person. He was a father, lawyer, musician, songwriter, horseback quail hunter, restaurateur, activist, documentary filmmaker, historian, writer and poet. Since 2001, he played guitar and sang with the Plowboys, a rock/folk band described as a hybrid of the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin and, thanks to Tom’s baritone, Johnny Cash.
In 2022, he created his fifth restaurant, a farm-to-table waterfront eatery in Georgetown, S.C., named Between the Antlers — after U.S. poet laureate and University of South Carolina professor James Dickey’s book “The Starry Place Between the Antlers.” Tom subsequently learned that George Washington once gave an address on the site. His favorite Dickey poem, “For the Last Wolverine,” was recited by his second son at the funeral. It ends with the words:
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Lord, let me die but not die / Out.
Another poem traditionally read at every Peterkin funeral since Julia Peterkin’s death in 1961, “Garden’s End” by Elfrida De Renne Barrow, was read at the burial site.
When a reporter once described him as a “serial entrepreneur” in 2017, Tom concurred. “A ‘serial entrepreneur’ is probably correct,” he said. “I can’t stop doing it. I’d like to. Sometimes you want to not have these passions. But when good people come together and you get good ideas and you create a way to do it in a simple way that just makes sense, it’s hard to ignore that.”
Around 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, Tom, 56, either fell asleep or suffered a heart attack, a family spokesperson said. His truck veered onto another road and flipped three times before bursting into flames. Tom’s foot never touched the brake pedal, the family was told.
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His wedding band and Citadel ring melted. I’m told he felt nothing, and I pray this is true. He wasn’t wearing a seat belt, according to his family, so it’s possible that by the time the flames engulfed him, his spirit was already racing home to warn the love of his life that bad news was coming.
I tell this story for three reasons: Because I can think of nothing else, and because Tom’s story deserves to be told. He was in the truest sense beloved. Unique and fine, his contagious enthusiasm drew people to him, even if they never met him. Countless mourners around the state didn’t know Tom but had heard stories and grieved for the bright light that had gone out. Some of those who did know him wondered why some fatal accident hadn’t happened until now. He lived loud and fast — and laughed the same way.
But the real reason is that the merry, crazy, fearless life of this particular man is a story for the ages, a universal, mythical tale that reminds us of how good we had it, that everything we dream of or pray for can be lost in an instant. Pffft.
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Maybe you know someone like him. If he was one in a million, there are at least 300 others walking amongst us, men and women blessed with gifts that transcend the ordinary and provide a spark that lights the path for others to follow. Tom wanted to bring everyone along for the ride, and only the fearful resisted the tug of his gentlemanly charm.
“He wasn’t reckless, but he was fearless,” his friend Muffy Kneece said.
Selfishly, I’d rather Tom have lived another 50 years just so I could hear all his stories. But strangely, I now can’t imagine him dying any other way, except maybe in a shipwreck or while wrestling a grizzly — a “good death,” which is to say while living life to its fullest. I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Tom Hall was doing when he decided he’d rather drive down the red clay road to his own bed in Lang Syne and sleep next to his beautiful wife than surrender to a sterile hotel room, alone with the nightmare of a moment wasted.
This much we know: Tom Hall will never die out.
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