Treville Lawrence

News Obituary Article

MARIETTA: Treville Lawrence, treasured family history

By KAY POWELL

Treville Lawrence ensured that his family's Marietta history was preserved.

The town's Lawrence Street is named for his great-grandfather, Judge Samuel Lawrence. The family's 1871 house at 267 Whitlock Ave. is protected from developers, and he fought to retain the one remaining rough stone wall of Union Chapel on Powder Springs Road where his grandfather taught Sunday school a century ago.

Mr. Lawrence, who lived around the world during his United States Air Force career, donated historic papers to Kennesaw State University and his grandfather's tools to the Marietta Museum of History.

Robert de Treville Lawrence III, 91, of Marietta died of pneumonia Friday at Metropolitan Hospice. The funeral is at 3 p.m. Saturday at St. James Episcopal Church. Mayes Ward-Dobbins Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.

His grandfather, the first Robert de Treville Lawrence, built railroads and bridges with tools Mr. Lawrence donated to the history museum.

"They are in a display all their own," said museum board chairwoman Mary Ladd of Marietta. "To have tools that don't exist any more for occupations that don't exist in that form any more from an old Marietta family makes this collection a very personal thing to Marietta. It's very pertinent. It's nostalgic and historic."

Mr. Lawrence served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. He flew the dangerous China-Burma-India route, known as the Hump, seven times. As an information and public relations officer, the University of Georgia journalism graduate would crank up a mimeograph machine and start newspapers wherever he was stationed --- Scotland, South Africa, Greece, South Vietnam, Liberia.

He played tennis into his 80s, planted an experimental vineyard in Virginia and edited a highly regarded book about President Thomas Jefferson and wine, said his wife, Howard Perkinson Lawrence.

"I thought he was the most interesting person I've ever known," she said. They went together in high school, married other people and met again 10 years ago.

He was getting a divorce; she was a widow. They had not seen each other in 50 years, and he called her and said he wanted to marry her, which he did in 1997.

"He was so darling. He was very affectionate. He was sexy. He was a delight," Mrs. Lawrence said.

And romantic? "Was he ever!" she said. "I used to think my father was the sweetest man ever, but Treville had him beat."

At Marietta High School, where they had dated, Mr. Lawrence was joke editor of the Pitchfork. "He was always great at embellishing," his wife said. "He told jokes all his life."

"Treville was a wonderful storyteller, and he was a gentleman," Mrs. Ladd said. "When he was telling a story, he always paid attention to the people around him."

He paid attention to his present and to his past. On a trip to the south of France, they visited Chateau de Treville, Mrs. Lawrence said, and he kept a connection to the Whitlock house where he grew up.

"Every time we would go anywhere, we had to ride by the house," she said, "no matter how bad the traffic was."

Other survivors include a son, Robert de Treville Lawrence IV of Warrenton, Va.; two daughters, Lelia R. Clark and Caro L. Bahnson, both of The Plains, Va.; a sister, Helen Vander Horst of Centerville, Tenn.; and seven grandchildren.

© 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution