Miriam Fulton

If Peachtree City were Camelot, seeking a royal family, it had but to look within. Until the deaths last year of King James Jr. and last week of Queen Miriam, 86, there were three princes in the House of Fulton, who added three daughters-in-law, seven grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren to the royal court.

They’ve all turned out well, most of them still live in Peachtree City, some in one of the family businesses. Miriam would not have had it any other way.

All the community and family connections are elsewhere published. These are my personal memories.

The Fultons lived near us, in that celebrated first house in Peachtree City. By the time we got here, in 1971, there were about 940 residents here and everyone knew everyone and wanted to keep it that way. Even Joel Cowan, our earliest developer and marketer, confesses to occasionally wishing we could pull up the bridge and leave the swarms of newcomers (latecomers?) on the other side of the moat.

Sound familiar? I’ll bet the majority of residents living here now have said the same. It’s hard to describe what Peachtree City was like in 1961. The east side of Lake Peachtree was heavily wooded. Same could be said about the far south. Local youths cut ATV and motorcycle paths through the trees. There was nothing to indicate that velvet putting greens would eventually replace them.

Out-of-town real estate agents were challenged to sell residential lots on promises that there would be a golf course here, a middle school there, tennis courts and swimming pools elsewhere, and enough industries on Dividend Drive to minimize the residential tax burden. There was an airport, but not a hospital. A post office. But no library.

Not a problem for Miriam. With a nudge from Cowan, she was the first to spot the connection between a quick-growing population and an on-site real estate agency that was willing to work hard. She took lessons and worked hard, opened Miriam Fulton Realty, and frequently gave credit to the patience of her husband, James Jr.

Support by spouses is crucial for so unpredictable an occupation, she said. When a client has driven all the way to Peachtree City on a two-lane road to see what’s here, a real estate agent can’t say, “Oh, just look at the time. It’s been nice talking to you, but I’ve got to put dinner on. The boys have a game tonight.”

Rather, potential buyers felt as though they were personal friends with the Fultons from their first visit. She spared no effort to make customers feel at home here.

And the reward? “I like helping with a very important decision, the choice and purchase of a home,” she said.

Our family too felt the gentle touch of Saint Miriam, as some called her for her generous contributions to First Baptist Church in Peachtree City. (“Generous” financially, sure, but most of it behind the scenes in planning and imagining.)

In 1976, when word got around that our daughter Alice had cancer and probably would not survive, Miriam bought her a nightgown for her many hospitalizations. Lots of people do that, you know, give gowns so the patient does not have to wear those dreary shapeless cotton shirts.

But Miriam did not give Alice a lacy beribboned gown as one might expect for a teen-aged girl. Instead, she gave her a royal blue satiny baseball jersey with red and white piping.

I still wonder why. Alice was not a baseball fan, and I doubt if Miriam was either. She said she just wanted to give Alice something a little bit different. From her own bouts with cancer and hospital gowns, Miriam was well aware of the daily struggle to change IV and monitor cables, and how the old cotton gowns often reveal more than a woman wants to reveal.

Al wore that shirt most of the time she was in the hospital, said it was the only thing she had with long sleeves to keep her arms warm when she was trying to read.

After she died, I wore it myself. Does it sound silly to say I could somehow feel Alice close to me by wearing her clothes?

I had the pleasure of interviewing Miriam and her Jimmy in 1988, at about the time they were thinking about retirement. “Thinking” was about as far as they got. Jimmy retired from Delta Air Lines in 1980, and his wife said she had never seen anyone love retirement so much. But neither of them wanted to retire from real estate.

In that 1988 interview, Jimmy unwittingly gave me the perfect closing line for this story. After hearing a friend rave about a vacation in Mexico, Miriam asked Jimmy if he wouldn’t like to go to Cancun where they “treat you like a king.”

Nah, he replied. “I’d rather stay right here where I am king.”