Institutions are debating how to handle Lay charity

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — Along the path to the Benedict Music Tent is an inconspicuous sign acknowledging an awfully conspicuous name.

"Garden Court given by Linda and Ken Lay Family" reads the small blue marker just outside the Aspen Music Festival and School's award-winning performance hall nestled among aspen trees, well-manicured lawns and wide-open meadows.

The philanthropic deeds of Lay, who died of a heart attack in Aspen earlier this month, and the spectacular collapse of the company he founded, Enron Corp., have institutions and organizations questioning where their appreciation of good deeds ends and their detachment from genuinely bad ones begins.

Lay's alma mater, the University of Missouri, is debating what to do with its endowed Kenneth L. Lay Chair in Economics, created by his donation of more than $1 million in Enron stock that the university sold before the company collapse. The professorship has not been filled.

Officials running the 40,000-seat stadium for the Houston Astros repaid Enron $2.1 million to sponge the corporation's soiled name from the ballpark. They went so far as to tape over Enron's name on a clock face at the stadium, which eventually was renamed Minute Maid Park.

Less clear is how to handle the fingerprints Lay — who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges in his energy company's demise — left in Aspen.

"We're not going to make a comment on this. It's a private board matter and we prefer not to say anything," said Aspen Music Festival and School spokeswoman Janice Szabo. She noted the garden court outside the Benedict Music Tent was dedicated to the Lays in 2000, a year before Enron became a worldwide emblem of corporate malfeasance.

Ask a once-faithful Enron employee about whether the Aspen Music Festival and School ought to keep the Lay name, and the response is straight to the point.

"I'm not too much in favor of it myself. Look at what he's done to us," said Charles Prestwood, 67, who reportedly lost $1.3 million in retirement savings after Enron went bankrupt.

Each month, Prestwood said, he barely pays his bills with the Social Security checks he receives. "He stole all of our money. . . . It is real easy to give someone else's money away."

Prestwood said he began working for Houston Natural Gas in March 1967. In 1985, Houston Natural Gas merged with Omaha, Neb.-based InterNorth to form Enron. In October 2000, Preston retired — just as Enron began its fall.