No Hometown Heroes

Even as the guilty verdicts led newscasts and made headlines around the world, the reaction here in Enron Corp.’s hometown was quiet satisfaction.

“There was no cheering,” said Judy Broadus, a 52-year-old legal secretary, who heard the news as she and her colleagues sat at their computers Thursday.

“This is not a cheering sort of situation,” she said of the guilty verdicts in the trial of Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffrey K. Skilling. “It’s sad that so many people lost their savings. It ruined so many lives.”

For a while, Broadus said, “I thought they might get off because of who they are. A lot of people thought they’d never get them.”

Across the city, people turned on their televisions at home, gathered at work and convened around the courthouse to witness the end of a spectacle that reached from downtown Houston into boardrooms and financial markets across the globe.

Carly Jennings, 40, a child development consultant, was in a park across the street from the federal courthouse where Lay and Skilling were convicted.

“I wish Michael Jackson could have been tried in that courthouse, because clearly it’s a place where things get done,” she said. “This is Texas. We have an old-fashioned sense of justice, and that’s what everyone saw today.”

She said the Enron debacle remained an embarrassment to Houston but the verdict was a big step forward.

“We were proud of Enron, all of its successes and what it did for Houston,” she said of the company, once a shining star of the state’s sizable energy industry. “Texans like to brag and we had bragging rights -- and then we didn’t. But now we have righted the wrong.”

Broadus was surprised by the severity of the jury’s findings, particularly when it came to Enron founder Lay, once a respected, patrician figure in Houston society.

“Skilling, people thought [was] a shark,” she said. “When this first happened, everybody wanted to believe Lay. He was like your grandfather, and that’s why I think it hurt more when the evidence came out. You didn’t expect that from him.”

Before Enron’s collapse and his indictment, Lay helped keep Major League Baseball’s Astros in Houston and threw out the ceremonial first pitch when Enron Field opened in 2000. The stadium was renamed Minute Maid Park in 2002, after Enron’s bankruptcy filing.

Trish Wise, chief executive of the Greater Southwest Houston Chamber of Commerce, said she and other staff members gathered around an office TV to watch the news on the verdict.

“We are glad it’s over, but it’s not a feel-good outcome,” she said. “There is a sense of sadness because we’ve all gone through this and everybody knows somebody who was involved -- one of the small persons at Enron.”

Sherri Saunders, a 59-year-old former Enron employee, lost her job and $1 million in retirement savings in the meltdown. She squealed, “Yes!” when she got a call with news of the verdict.

“Ken Lay has been coming out of the courthouse every day saying the case is in the hands of the jury, judge and God,” she said. “To me, God has spoken to him with this verdict.”

Jennings, the child development consultant, said having Lay and Skilling lose their reputations, their wealth and now their freedom was a measure of justice.

“All of those Enron employees that lost their money, they had the private humiliation of telling their children they can’t go to college,” she said. “Lay and Skilling lived their fancy lives in the public and now they’re living their humiliation in public, and that’s what they deserve.”

Hart reported from Houston and Goldman from Los Angeles. Times wire services were used in compiling this report.