here the circular drive slopes to opposite
sides of a rolling green lawn, the man of
the house, comfortable amid this rash
of pink pigment, Tom Dalton welcomes guests.
“We want to make you smile,” he says.
Beyond him, the columned portico leads to the interior entry hall and formal
living room and rotunda, providing a convenient way for guests to travel across
the threshold back into the outdoors, where the backyard beckons.
When the rotunda’s French doors fly open, the crowd surges into an outdoor
foyer. The sound of trickling water cascades over the rim of a tiered fountain
that features three children skipping round a muse. The outdoor foyer flows
toward an outdoor living room.
Tom stacks logs in the grate and quickly builds a fire with the built-in gas
starter. Trailing across grassy paths, stepping over stamped concrete or placed
pavers, guests spread in all directions, into the outdoor living room, toward a
covered dining room, the lap pool and the putting
green.
When they are not entertaining, Tom and Kim
reserve the outdoor living room to enjoy what they
call couch time, a 15-minute ritual spent engaged in
quiet conversation without the children.
This is a fitting place for Tom to say that he and
Kim were high school sweethearts. Their courtship
began in 5th grade when he asked her to go steady
then marry him.
“Communication is a huge deal for us,” Tom says.
Following high school graduation in Springfield,
Missouri, college and career scattered the couple
to urban destinations like Boston, where Tom, an
anesthesiologist, interned at Massachusetts General
Hospital, then finally Seattle, before the Daltons
moved to Wilmington with the first two of their three
children in 1996 and bought a house down the street.
But their dream house, built in 1948 by Ivan
60
WBM june 2012
Top: The stately colonial
façade of the Dalton home
in Forest Hills. Clockwise,
opposite: Kim and Tom
Dalton prepare to share
a meal with son Miller,
left, and friend Vance
Young Jr. The outdoor
pool and fountains were
designed on the footprint
of a former indoor
pool. Each evening Tom
and Kim Dalton enjoy
couch time around the
outdoor fireplace. Pink
snapdragons, Knock
Out roses and minature
trailing petunias fill urns
and buffer hardscapes and
sculptured fountains.