Houston – Enron founder Ken Lay, convicted of a fraud that destroyed his company, was called a victim of “a lynching” by a mourner at a memorial service Wednesday marred by the collapse of former Houston Mayor Bob Lanier.
Guests among the several hundred mourners included former President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara; former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker; ex-Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher Sr.; former Enron president John Seidl; heart surgeon Denton Cooley; Lay’s defense lawyer, Mike Ramsey; and Drayton McLane Jr., owner of the Houston Astros baseball team.
Lay, who also was Enron’s chairman, died July 5 on a ranch near Aspen. He was 64.
“Ken Lay was neither black nor poor, but he was a victim of a lynching,” the Rev. William Lawson, a Houston civil-rights leader, said at the service, which was held at Houston’s First United Methodist Church.
Lay and his successor as Enron’s chief executive, Jeff Skilling, 52, were convicted May 25 of spearheading the fraud that plunged the former energy giant into bankruptcy in December 2001. They were scheduled to be sentenced in October.
Lay was facing the prospect of spending the rest of his life in federal prison.
Lawson said history may redeem Lay’s reputation.
“He was not the Ken Lay portrayed by the media, not the Ken Lay who was the butt of late- night jokes, not the Ken Lay who was convicted and vilified by a whole community,” Lawson said.
Bush did not speak at the service, nor did Baker or Mosbacher.
Stephen Wende, pastor of the church, announced at the beginning of the service that Lanier, 81, a friend of Lay, had collapsed and that an ambulance had been called.
Wende urged attendees at the service to pray for “our very dear friend Bob Lanier, who is very clearly ill.”
Lanier was taken to a Houston hospital, where he was in stable condition and undergoing tests. It was unclear why he had collapsed.
An earlier memorial service for Lay’s family and friends was held Sunday in Aspen.
Now a real estate developer, Lanier was hospitalized in 1998 after suffering a heart attack while on vacation near San Diego in 1998.
