The first lesson pressed into Wheats Vandermont while he still had baby teeth was that you never show more cards than you need to, the cold  enduring distance of his father amidst the Great Depression saw to that.  The second lesson Wheats learned while he still had human canine teeth was to never let anything have power over you that you in turn had no power over, he received that education watching his mother die badly amidst addiction complications, screaming in incoherant rage at the world and her son.
Trauma often shatters, the young man who would later be a mover and shaker in the Atlanta political machine was instead tempered and then cooled in the amoral realities of politics.  A need for structure and control always lay at the heart of Vandermont's ambition, he truly believed he could subvert the game and make a better system from the young beginnings of his career in city government.  The ambitious man only failed once in his careful methodical schemes.  When a fiery young newcomer named Lilian Restrepo ran against him for his surefire council seat, full of conviction for liberal reform, Vandermont was too immersed in his other dozens of moving parts to begin to take her seriously.  Restrepo won, setting Wheats back a few years in his plans, and Wheats frankly lost his cool and collected shit.  He abandoned the political scene for nearly half a year.  He obsessed over Restrepo.  He honed his mind instead on investigating and tracking his opponent.  By the time he discovered she was with her lesbian lover when she wasn't with her family, his rage had cooled and he had learned a valuable lesson and cemented his collected demeanor with twice the rigidity.  He still outed her and destroyed her career though, it was for the good of the community that he remain on top.
 Wheats believed cleverly exploiting the smallest legal oversight or loophole was merely playing a complex instrument to its fullest ability.  As decades in local Atlantan politics passed, there were few administrative or planning roles that Wheats didn't have influence over, or had served in at some time.  Even at that point, he would have passionately defended each decision he had made against his greater vision.  'A ruler should be just that, straight and measured', he would lecture when the nights went late at the galas and fundraisers.  Wheats never had the raw charisma and likeability to run for mayor, but he contented himself in the belief that in the end, his elaborate network of favors and agreements was the true power.  Vandermont did not resent those who reigned over him.  He did his best to excel for those to whom he owed favors.  For Wheats, it was an intensely religious experience, a paying of tithes into a system of which he saught the summit.  While the Southern Baptist church showed promise of connecting and elevating him further, he patronized it.
Just as easily did he stray into research of the paranormal when the politician's pragmatic eyes witnessed phenomena in a secret fraternity of the wealthy and powerful that his rational mind could not explain.  Wheats had dabbled for a while in the promise of infernalistic shortcuts as he felt age begin to catch up on him, but this ratty tome that the fellowship had acquired seemed to whisper when its pages were turned, and between its parlor trick incantations it hinted at a hidden world inhabited by creatures of darkness and hunger.  That was when Vandermont ran out the patience of Granny Nightlight, and the world he had built came to an end.
The urban legend of the Kindly Granny was older than Wheats himself.  It was a strangely coherant repeating tale among the homeless and destitute of the city slums that one could be awoken after sunset, be it on a park bench, behind a dumpster, or in a blighted trap house, by an ancient dark skinned woman with an odd accent.  You would feel a strange prickling on your neck or arm and a feeling of weakness as you awoke to a bowing apparition thanking you for your kindness, and then she would be gone.  Before dawn and without fail, that person could be gauranteed to trip over a heaping bag of food, round a corner to a handle of finest whiskey on the sidewalk, or get news that someone who had wronged them had met with an unfortunate accident.
When the brothers of his little secret faux-rder began dying within weeks of each other, or being committed to nursing homes after serious seizures, Vandermont didn't know Granny Nightlight had finally been given a free ticket to kill him without issue, but he knew enough to have the vague idea that something was coming for him besides coincidence.  When Granny found Wheats he was alone in the study of his practical uptown home in the wee hours, his wife and kids having left years ago and him having made his excuses to withdraw from public life weeks ago.  The strange book, a glass of water, and a shotgun that still had the safety on were the only things Granny noted as she entered his window.  She laughed at the wards he had drawn on the windows and doors, gently informing Wheats that she was neither a twice-spurned phantom of the Third Calling, nor genital warts to be so easily cured, even if he had used the correct materials.  Granny Nightlight took Wheat's face tenderly in what felt like talons of steel and whispered to him as she caressed his dwindling hair as no one had done for many years.  She spoke of how deeply she hated him and men like him, how he had been a blight to the vulnerable and impoverished of Atlanta as he strove to improve his machine of words and rules.  With joy she thanked him for dabbling in secrets forbidden to mortals, which allowed her to finally kill Wheats and his brethren.  With an enormous smile she looked into Wheat's paralyzed wide eyes and told him that she had just changed her mind again, having seen his works and looked upon him.  Would he help her keep the secret of this little indulgence?  Instead, she would give him a true gift.  She would free him from his barred mind and give him the ability to question, to rebel, to see the plight of those ground underfoot and be a spike for the boot on their throats.  And then amid his whimpering she violently Embraced him.

Which kind of sucked for Wheats because that was a long backstory and he didn't even get a chance to remember with romantic longing his last sunset because that crazy Brujah bitch had been stalking his friends the past month of nights.  Anyway, that was that. The bitch got what she wanted for awhile.  She left Wheats traumatized, confused and alone with all his plans ruined, can't shake too many hands and kiss too many babies when the sun wants to fry you.  And thank Caine or whoever that Wheats had that smidgen of occult lore needed to keep him from making absolutely stupid mistakes early on as he tried to make his way with all these new rules.  He had read whispers of the dominating and coercing powers of the night children, but his old ass woke up to a jump of terror that got his head stuck in the plaster of his ceiling.  Absolutely useless to a body long abandoned for pursuits of the mind.    And don't even mention the BURNING inside him that welled up in his blood, demanding he strike out against every structure of authority, fly into a rage at every slight.
The bitch thought it would break him or help him see the blacklight I guess.  For a short while it did I suppose, but with time our dear Mister Vandermont found a new purpose instead of terrified despair.  By the time the local Camarilla found him, eccentrically barricaded in his estate, he had already begun to turn a predatory eye on the Beast within.  Maybe it was a coping mechanism, but Wheats began to take joy in the supernatural rage inside where before was just a cold apathy.  He began to see his outer resolve as a machine built to contain the raw fuel of the spirit within him that was anathema to everything he believed in.  It hated him, and his hatred of it pushed back in perfect balance.  His sense of purpose only grew as his new masters opened his eyes to a whole new world.  He began to see the possibilities of an unlife where he could see the fruits of his programs over decades and centuries, a whole power structure hiding beneath the one he had known, True Power.  It made it bearable that further communion with his bloodline lead only to worthless heightened reflexes, the new Brujah loved the stability of the Camarilla and looked forward to an eternity unburdened by human concerns and woes.  His good work in his new unlife lasted a good five years, until an outraged Granny Nightlight ambushed him in his office and unceremoniously rammed a stake through his heart.  I guess she didn't plan on things going so well for him.  The next Wheats knew he was spluttering awake and having to escape a morgue while stark naked, took him days before his undead lungs could work out all the mud and water.  Wouldn't you know it, the bitter old whore had buried him in the Chattahoochee, and by chance an industrial dredging project had thrown his mangled corpse onto the banks.  And it was goddamn 2011!  To his utter horror, the safe and static world of the Camarilla had shattered, and his own clan had abandoned it.  That was fine by Wheats.  It would be brought to heel or wiped out for better stock, he didn't ask for that cursed bloodline.  It was a blow to see this beautiful structure in shambles, true, but it was also a time of great opportunity for someone like Vandermont to reenter the scene.  He actually knelt before Lucinde when she came to him, overcome with emotion at being given the task and purpose of helping to retake the South.  And as if it were a sign, finally, the useful parts of his elders-forsaken bloodline is starting to show fruit as he is learning to use his Presence.
Wheats spent a lot of time sitting alone in the Georgia Aquarium as he recovered emotionally and mentally from his long Torpor.  He continues to fancy animals and habitate management in lieu of ability to truly connect to other sentient creatures, and he still enjoys people watching.  He uses his Mask of Darren Gavin (Christmas Story was big when he was Torpored but 'Mc' feels too foreign) to problem solve for local politicians and has made quite a name for himself while masquerading as an eccentric ex-politician who only comes out to trade favors in the night.  He also relies heavily on April Gudweiht, a poli sci major contact that makes easy money doing complex things like Googling information for him and giving him driving directions to write down when he is in a new city, as he never got the hang of anything newer than a pager, payphone, or fax machine.