The man who built Pity’s Sake Lodge
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009
By Emily Ford
eford@salisburypost.com
ENOCHVILLE ó When David Murdock hired Bill Tarlton to build a sprawling lodge in rural Rowan County, the construction superintendent didn’t know exactly what he’d gotten himself into.
Murdock “didn’t say how quick he wanted it when we signed the contract,” says Tarlton, who turns 80 next month.
He supervised construction of Pity’s Sake Lodge in 1982.
Murdock, the billionaire developer of the N.C. Research Campus who’s known for setting nearly impossible deadlines, announced that he wanted the 14,000-square-foot, 12-bedroom home completed in three months.
Tarlton recalls his reaction to the news.
“Good Lord,” he thought.
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In the 1960s, Tarlton nearly died falling off the roof of West Point Baptist Church in Kannapolis.
As the skies opened up and rain began to pour, Tarlton started down his ladder. The wind caught the ladder and twisted it, sending him crashing to the earth two stories below.
On the ground with a broken back, his crew members ripped a temporary door off the church and held it over him while they waited for an ambulance. Tarlton remembers wondering why they went to all the trouble.
“I was already soaked,” he says with a smile.
He was back at work in less than two months, supervising crews in a body cast.
He can’t talk about construction, even the ugly stories, without smiling.
“It’s like putting together one big playhouse,” he says. “I like to see how things go together.”
Born and raised in Union County, he’s built things all his life, working in Charlotte and then Kannapolis after moving there in 1949 when he married his wife, Inez.
He joined the Army for two years and still wears his hair in a short crew cut. He returned to Kannapolis and went to work for Kannapolis Construction, serving as general superintendent for commercial and church construction.
“I’ve built more church steeples than I’ve got toes and fingers,” he says.
That would make nine, since he lost the middle finger on his left hand during an unfortunate run-in with a saw.
In Tarlton’s day, church steeples were constructed on site from wood. Now, most steeples are prefabricated.
“I call it a fake one,” he says, and shakes his head.
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Normally, building a 14,000-square-foot lodge would take about 10 months.
Tarlton and Kannapolis Construction built Murdock’s home in 98 days.
“I gave it to him,” Tarlton says matter of factly. “Anything is possible.”
It helped, he adds, that the weather cooperated.
Tarlton worked seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. for 98 days. He was the first to arrive, opening the gates on Cannon Farm Road for the first shift, and he was the last to leave, locking the gates behind the second shift.
“We didn’t see much of each other,” Inez Tarlton says.
They still live in their modest Kannapolis home, where Bill catches an occasional nap in his chair under the carport.
While he built the lodge, his wife worked at Cannon Mills in the morning and Dixie Cleaners in the afternoon, which the Tarltons owned.
Despite the deadline pressure, Tarlton says he enjoyed it.
“I had more fun building this thing than building anything else,” he said on a recent visit to the lodge. “It’s not anything we were afraid of. The size didn’t bother us.”
He had a workforce of carpenters from Cannon Mills, and they did a good job, he says.
His standards were high.
“I don’t know anything about cutting corners,” he says. “Whatever it takes to do the job, that’s what you do.”
If Tarlton discovered a mistake, the carpenter had to redo the work.
“I’ve never been one to make a mess and cover it up,” Tarlton says. “If I make a mess, I tear it out.”
Tarlton’s expectations echo the perfection demanded by Murdock himself, says Lynne Scott Safrit, president of Atlantic American Properties, one of Murdock’s real estate companies.
“Bill would demand the same kind of quality that Mr. Murdock would want to see,” Safrit says.
When Tarlton retired from Kannapolis Construction in 1983, he went to work for Murdock and Safrit as vice president of construction for Atlantic American Properties. He speaks fondly of Murdock.
“He treated me like one of the family,” Tarlton says. “I enjoyed working with him.”
Tarlton retired from Atlantic American in 1991 and proudly displays a framed composite of the buildings he constructedóthe Duke Power building, Waccamaw building, Cabarrus Savings Bank, Cannon Village and, of course, Pity’s Sake Lodge.
“He’s a delightful person, genuine and hardworking,” Safrit says. “Whatever you would ask him to do, he would do it.”
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Murdock has five homes: two in California (one in Bel Air and another in Thousand Oaks), and a home on Lanai, an island he owns in Hawaii. He has a large apartment in New York City that overlooks Central Park.
And he has the lodge in Enochville, adjacent to the Kannapolis city limits. The land, lodge and other structures have a tax value of $10 million.
The home features a 12-foot-wide fireplace built from stones dredged from nearby Lake Kannapolis, which Murdock owns. The city of Kannapolis owns the water.
When Murdock is home, the staff keeps 4-foot logs burning all day, even in the summer. Murdock and Safrit came up with the idea for the N.C. Research Campus in 2005 while sitting in front of the fireplace.
The winding staircase may be the most photographed feature in the lodge.
“It took three or four men working seven or eight weeks to build,” the Salisbury Post reported at the time. “Then it took three men six weeks to install.”
Three groundskeepers maintain the 137-acre property, which features walking trails, gardens, pool, tennis courts, wine cellar, boat house, orchards and barn.
Longtime employee Will-iam Gilbert cares for the many animals, which include Black Welsh Mountain sheep, one of only a few herds in the country. To protect the sheep from coyotes, the farm employs a llama named Big Daddy and two donkeys named Savannah and Sarah.
Four Great Pyrenees dogs named Angel, Tiny, Buffy and Ruffles guard each pasture, with help from a stray dog that Safrit found on the Research Campus and an orphaned cow named Easter. A huge pig named Pinky rules the barn.
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The lodge and farm are beautiful in any season, Safrit says. At twilight, guests often see a family of deer lingering in the lawn.
“It’s a beautiful, tranquil place,” she says.
These days, with development of the $1.5 billion N.C. Research Campus going full speed, Murdock, 85, rarely has time to enjoy the beauty, she says. His workday begins around 7 a.m. and ends many nights at 11.
Like Murdock, Tarlton dropped out of school in the ninth grade.
Tarlton has admired Murdock’s biotechnology complex rising from the ruins of the old textile mill in downtown Kannapolis.
Construction crews have completed four buildings so far, and plans call for dozens more in the next decade.
Inez says her husband often tells people, “I wish I would’ve been able to help build that.”
Tarlton nods. He thinks about construction still, even at rest.
“He builds a lot,” Inez says, “in his sleep.”