Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(7)
In his eyes, Tom Senior was the fun dad, the dad who played the best games and made you laugh the hardest—when he was around. Which, sadly, was not often. Childhood expectation was invariably tinged with disappointment. He was consumed by his work, the fruits of his labor coming in local Emmy nominations—and a fat paycheck. The price he paid for such success was his marriage; the constant late nights, the boozy cast parties, and endless distraction and fatigue took their toll. One of Tom Junior’s earliest memories is the sound of raised voices, slamming doors, and angry words. At some point in the early 1970s, when the children were still in elementary school, the couple decided to go their separate ways.
For a time, Tom lived in Chicago and had the children on weekends. But it didn’t last long. He had a dream, and that dream was Hollywood. Sometime before their divorce in 1975, Tom left his estranged wife and children behind as he started his new life on the West Coast. The children would not see their father again for several years.
At the urging of her brother Richard, who lived in New Mexico, Roslyn and the children traveled to Albuquerque to make a new life. For a while it was a happy time. Uncle Richard was not his father, as far as Tom Junior was concerned, but at least he was around, teaching him to drive his VW Bug in a parking lot and showing him how to shoot. Plus, Richard and Roslyn got on well together. For the first time in their lives the children did not have to live with a rancorous atmosphere at home.
The downside was that as the only redhead at his new school, Tom Junior found himself bullied and picked on by his new classmates. Fellow pupils would steal his lunch money, while others started fights. He used to dread going to school, often coming home with yet another black eye. Worse was to come. One night he went to see the movie Smokey and the Bandit with his mother and her new boyfriend, a martial arts expert called Patrick. They arrived back home to find a full-scale robbery in progress. When Patrick tackled the thieves, he was shot in the stomach and the mouth, the bullets whistling past Tom Junior. Although Patrick survived, Tom Junior was traumatized.
Between bullying and burglary Tom Junior decided to leave Albuquerque and go live with his father, who was now enjoying life at the beachfront town of Santa Monica in Southern California. He arrived in time to enroll in high school.
Though he still idolized his father, there was one big fat fly in the ointment of his new life: his sister, Yvonne. She had moved there a few years earlier when she was fourteen. They had always fought like cats and dogs. “The sibling rivals from hell,” their despairing mother called them.
When the trio moved from Santa Monica to a large home on Providencia Street adjacent to the Woodland Hills Country Club, Tom Junior snagged the downstairs den as his bedroom. He was especially thrilled when a friend sold him a king-sized waterbed. His excitement turned to dismay when he sat on it shortly after taking delivery only to be soaked in water. Inspecting the evidence, he discovered several holes in the brand-new bed. For Tom, there was only one suspect. He recalls that his sister Yvonne immediately admitted responsibility but argued that it was retribution as she had wanted that room for herself—another episode in a bitter, resentful dance between the siblings. As her brother now recalls, “If she didn’t get what she wanted out of you, she was your worst nightmare.”
Enter into this bickering dynamic the figure of Doria Ragland. Small and watchful, with liquid brown eyes and a jaunty Afro, this was the woman who had turned their father Tom into gooey mush. Before he ever brought her home, the children noticed a change in their father. He was more relaxed, frequently taking time off work, cheery and lighthearted. In short, he was happy. The couple had met on the set of ABC’s drama General Hospital, where she was training as a makeup artist and he was well established as the show’s lighting director. In spite of the twelve-year age difference—Doria was closer in age to Yvonne than to her boyfriend—the couple very quickly fell for each other.
Doria’s education at Fairfax High School had been badly affected by the 1971 San Fernando earthquake. The quake had destroyed nearby Los Angeles High School, so the two schools doubled up, Doria studying from seven in the morning until noon and then pupils from LAHS taking over their classroom for the afternoon. In spite of the difficulties she was a member of the Apex Club, a class for academically advanced youngsters. After graduating from Fairfax, Doria sold jewelry, helped in Alvin’s antique store, called ’Twas New, and tended a bric-a-brac stall at a Sunday flea market. She also worked as a travel agent. It was a way of obtaining cut-rate air tickets so she could see the world on the cheap.
Not that Tom Junior took much notice of the new addition to the Providencia Street household. What with his skateboarding and go-karting and working for a florist, Tom Junior barely missed a beat when Doria moved in. He was too busy enjoying himself with his new circle of friends.
As for Yvonne, it appears to have been indifference, if not dislike, at first sight. Eager that Thomas use his showbiz connections to get her work as a model or an actor, she doubtless resented the fact that the new arrival was taking her father’s focus away from her. During her time in Albuquerque with her mother, she had modeled jewelry and wedding gowns. Now the teenager was seeing dollar bills in the Hollywood sign. When her friends came over to the house she dismissed the presence of her father’s African American girlfriend, referring to her, according to her brother, as “the maid.” Her best friend, now a successful Realtor, doesn’t recall Yvonne using that language, and even if she did she ascribes it to her sour Chicago sense of humor. Nonetheless, Yvonne was not, as her mother recalls, a particularly tolerant young woman.