LIVING HISTORY
GROWING FAMILY
In addition, with Jo Ann’s knowledge, he is supporting
two families from extramarital relationships. In addition
to two daughters from Jo Ann, Debra and Kathy, born in
1953 and 1954, he also has a son he fathered with another
rancher’s wife, William Thomas “Tee’’ Sloan, born in 1963.
In 1970, his relationship with his secretary and later financial
manager, Diane Robertson, is revealed, and he eventually
lives with her and her three children.
Jo Ann’s upbringing has steeled her emotions, allowing
her to quietly endure almost anything. She remains married
to TL but spends most of her time at Tellico, the 230-acre
farm they purchased in North Carolina in 1970.
Back in Fort Pierce, TL buys the city block on Orange
Avenue around Jo Ann’s family home, built by her grandfather
and renovates the houses on the block. He builds a corporate
a house on the east side in which he, Diane and her three
children live. He builds a wall around much of it, and family
members call it “the compound.’’
To the public, the well of money from the estate Frank
Raulerson created for his granddaughter seemed bottomless.
the money well was drying up and TL was spending too
much money.
“Tommy was her downfall,’’ says Thomas Kindred Sr.,
who graduated with Jo Ann in the Fort Pierce High School
Class of 1948. “She should have never married that boy. He
didn’t do anything but spend her money.’’
TL’s primary motivations for selling the main part of the >>
30
in 1922 and where Jo Ann stays when she is in town,
office next to the Raulerson house and renovates
But the 1976 sale of Cow Creek gave an indication that
Experience the
other side of Florida
ROBERTSON FAMILY ARCHIVES
Diane Robertson and TL Sloan in the 1990s.
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