Bruin's Wake

Paul glanced at George, then at Allison. What was going on here? More than a one-night fling, Paul thought to himself. It wasn’t every day that George invited another woman into their lives. For four years, George and Paul had been inseparable. It was a special bond that could have only been forged through tragedy.

George Bruin was born in Oxford, Mississippi on August 14, 1945… the exact day the Second World War ended. Unlike many other youngsters at the time, George did not grow up in the elite class of Mississippians who had placed their entire status, reputation, and livelihood into the success of the cotton plant. But that didn’t prevent George from having all the comforts that any other Southern, upper-class family could provide—like a sense of family, belonging, and security. His father Henry had owned and operated Magnolia Trailways, a competitor of the Greyhound Bus Lines that made frequent stops in Jackson, Biloxi,Vicksburg, and Memphis.

Back home in Oxford, George shared a large white mansion on Old Taylor Road with his mother Eva and his younger brother Lonnie. But George always longed to be on the open road with his father, absorbing all the sights and experiences that Oxford failed to offer.

At fifteen, George was sent to a strict boarding school in Jackson, where discipline was the order of the day and mischief the order of the night, as George managed to break every rule the school had. He would often spend countless nights racing his hot rod car down dark country roads with the local kids. Or he would sneak out at night and drive to Memphis to the north or Jackson to the south to soak in the fast lights and lifestyle of the big city. And if it weren’t for George’s good grades and his father’s bottomless checkbook, George would have been expelled the first semester he got there.

After boarding school, George enrolled at the University of Mississippi—Ole Miss—where he joined a fraternity, partied hard, chased women, and despite it all, managed to graduate with honors in four years. It was also in college that George first read the legendary works of William Faulkner, Walker Percy, and Shelby Foote, Mississippi-born writers who seemed to embody all that was grand and tragic about the Old South. After reading Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! George had changed his entire outlook on life. Faulkner’s fictional Yoknapatawpha County had become a reality to him. And now he had a strong urge to transform the South into a progressive promoter of fairness and industry, all while clinging to the values of the antebellum South.

By 1968, rumblings of a war in Vietnam and a messy civil rights scene in his own state had forced George to make a decision: either stay in Oxford and most certainly be drafted, or move. So he did, north to Memphis. George began work at the Turley Cotton Company in the summer of 1968, selling cotton wholesale along Front Street in the heart of the Memphis cotton community. And it was in Memphis that George met some of the city’s most powerful families—the Turleys, the Dunavents, the Zanones. The people with the power and respect, and the people George’s father always sought to be a part of, but never managed to be blessed with the right last name… and people George had always admired for their dedication to Southern industry and commerce.

In 1970, George met his first wife, Rachael, at a charity cotton carnival ball held in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel. She was young, beautiful, brimming with life, and only twenty, with jet-black hair and the face of innocence. And her ties to Memphis money and politics only enhanced George’s rising influence in the community. After a two-month courtship, they were married in the gardens of the Galloway Mansion in Midtown Memphis. And in July 1972, Rachael gave birth to twin boys—Patrick and Steven.

In 1973, using a hefty inheritance bequeathed to him by his father,George bought a 10,000-acre tract of land near Hughes, Arkansas. And with the help of a syndicate formed by his brother Lonnie and his wife Rachael, they financed the foundation of Bruin’s Plantation. And soon thereafter, Bruin’s Plantation became the prime distributor of cotton throughout the Southeastern United States and beyond—with accounts as close by as Memphis, Birmingham, and New Orleans, and as far away as London, Paris, and Hong Kong.