Richard Thornton:
CLASS OF 1967
Lakeshore High SchoolClass of 1967
College park, GA
Richard's Story
(updated October 2019) Still have not remarried. The only women that I seem to have anything in common with, live elsewhere.
You wouldn't believe my life - good, bad and bizarre.. Often I don't either. Over the past decade I have become extremely active in my Creek Indian heritage and am now Principal Chief of the Coweta Creek Tribe. I have written 16 books so far on Architectural History and Native American history . In 2009 I was the Architect for Oklahoma's Trail of Tears Memorial in Tulsa. My YouTube Channel is "People of One Fire" - The website where I report our archaeological discoveries is The Americas Revealed website.
Supposedly by mistake, deputies showed up at my home on Dec. 21, 2009 with eviction notice that said I had to be out of my home by Christmas Eve. I was supposed to close on a FannieMae Loan in three weeks, but they didn't care. I spent one year in a tent in the national forests and one year in an abandoned chicken house. That's when I discovered the stone ruins of a 1000 year old Itza Maya terrace complex. That discovery led to me being on the most watched program ever on the History Channel - America Unearthed - the Mayas in Georgia. That has put me on several other TV programs. Since 2012, my archaeological work has turned the history of the Southeast upside down. Recently, I found rock carvings on Chimney Mountain, GA which portray a writing system, used in Sweden! 4000 years ago. Currently, I am studying the ruins of a town near where I live in the Nacoochee Valley, which apparently was built by refugees from the Olmec Civilization.
For those of you living in Peachtree City . . . I was on the original planning team of Peachtree City. My first assignment when I got back from working in Sweden was to design Peachtree City's path system. Never dreamed that it would actually be built. Came back 18 years later an...Expand for more
d there it was!
Guess among the positive things in my life were the famous people I've known. That has been interesting. I was playing Allman Brothers records with Jimmy Carter and his sons when a young Senator Joe Biden showed up unexpectedly to ask him to run for president.
While living in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, I did some architecture work for some new neighbors, a up and coming young attorney and his cute wife, who was a weekend reporter for Channel 4 in Washington, DC. They, my ex and I became good friends with them. A few months later, the reporter was fired . . . then a month later was hired by NBC to report from the Pentagon during Desert Storm . . . then after that she replace Deborah Norville as anchor of the Today Show. Her name, of course, is Katie Couric. While living in Virginia I also was architect for another neighbor's house, James Carville. Life is indeed a box of chocolates.
Y'all didn't know this, but at Georgia Tech I dated several gals that were also Lakeshore graduates. I still have their love letters, but two have died in recent years. Also, my old friend from Lakeshore, Susan Muse, died of cancer a few miles away, at the exact moment that the Travel Channel was filming a program on Track Rock with me. In college, Susan and I used to visit archaeological sites together - just as friends.
It is a weird feeling when I read their words so long ago. I also have the drawings that I did of Jo Evelyn Kelly in December 1967 for an art class at Tech. I plan to use them to extort JoEvelyn <just kidding.> I also have photos of JoEvelyn and Mary Jane Lowe (Parker) working on the decorations of the 1966 Junior-Senior prom. Mary Jane has already seen them .
Didn't know my life was going to be so full of unusual experiences, but who knows the future and what it holds for everybody. God bless you all.
Richard
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