Former Pointer finds D-I-V-O-R-C-E
doesn't mean the ex plays fair

If you do a Google search for Homer Laffoon you will get 238,000 hits. That’s pretty impressive for a seven-year-old boy who has done nothing more to get the public’s attention than be born to screen and television actress Anne Heche and her ex-husband Coleman (Coley) Laffoon.

Ms. Heche, 40, catapulted to the gossip world’s attention when she had a several-year relationship with television host/comedian Ellen DeGeneres. That was before she dumped DeGeneres is favor of Coley, 35, a former movie cameraman, who grew up in Grosse Pointe while his dad, Polk Laffoon, was affiliated with the Detroit Free Press. Polk went on to be a top executive with Knight-Ridder newspapers before the chain was dissolved in a sale to McClatchy Newspapers.

After a five-year marriage, Anne dumped Coley to take up with one of her co-stars. After an acrimonious 2007 divorce, they share custody of little Homer. Coley got $3,700 a month in support and a lump sum of $515,000, according to US magazine.

Laffoon, who now works for a Los Angeles real estate company, was in his youth a camp counselor at Hayo-Went-Ha, the YMCA camp on Torch Lake in northern Michigan. My sons who were under his tutelage for a week thought he was a pretty right guy.

Recently Coley was treated to an excoriation by his ex-wife on the David Letterman show. She called him a “lazy ass” for the entire world to share. She claimed his main occupations are playing soccer and opening his mailbox to get her child-support checks.

“He goes out to the mailbox and he opens up the little mailbox door and goes ‘Oh, I got a check from Anne! Yay!’" she told Letterman.

US magazine tracked Coley down and got this response: “After coming home from showing two different clients two different condominiums, I was disturbed to see Anne taking out her personal frustration on the father of her child on national television."   He later wrote on his Facebook page: “I wish Anne Heche could see that public bullying isn’t good for the soul or positive for her child. It’s mean.”

It’s a long, long way from Camp Hayo-Went-Ha to Hollywood, but Coley sounds reasonable to me. But you have to wonder whether Homer will lead a normal life and perhaps get a chance someday to swim in Torch Lake.

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