A real Man of God Malice in Wonderland a real man of god

Midway their playground
Myers, who proudly recounts how his own children and grandchildren grew up on the midway, says: "What I usually say about kids in the carnival business is that the midway is their playground."

Not in any traditional way, however. Many of the kids who travel and work with the carnival rides bikes and skateboards along the midway before the fair opens at 5 p.m. or after it closes at midnight. They are not allowed to roam the midway alone during fair hours, Myers said. None of them seems to object.

For many of the older children, the carnival rides and attractions no longer hold any fascination. The younger ones must stick close to mom and dad, which means they spend most of the fair each night in concession stands or ticket booths.
Baby sitters for some
Some have baby sitters. Alicia Marks, a University of Kentucky engineering student whose husband's aunt works in the fair office, arrives at the Weaver trailer each afternoon to watch after Joey Weaver, 2, and his sister, Olivia 5. Their father, Vince Weaver, 29, owns and operates four concessions and four rides at the fair.

Weaver often takes one or both of his children with him as he makes his rounds. Joey, decked out in a Barney the dinosaur t-shirt, rides with his father to deliver bags of ice to the concession stands.

Olivia, who is on foot, is headed with Marks in the opposite direction.

The fair has just opened, and hardly anyone is on the midway. When the crowd gets too big they will go back to the trailer to play and watch television. Alicia does not want to run the risk of losing Olivia in the crowd.

"We usually walk around the midway about 30 times a night," Marks says, grinning. "They try to get me to ride, but I don't ride some of them. I got sick on the Hurricane."

Marks has more confidence in Olivia. "Spin her," she tells a ride operator as the little girl climbs aboard what looks like a giant apple.

The operator is a big man. On his head he wears a Harley-Davidson cap, on his feet unlaced Converse basketball shoes. He shakes his head and smiles slightly before stepping away from the Cheez Bits perched on top of the control box and spinning Olivia's car by hand.
Lessons to learn
Down the midway, Barbara Haake opens the door of the Hot Dog Factory, a concession stand she owns and operates with her husband, Bernie. The smell of grease and onions bursts out over the midway.

Barbara Haake leads her two daughters, Barbie, 9, and Megan, 8, out into the field where the Haakes keep the ponys for their pony ride. They sit down at a card table covered with a blue-floral tablecloth and their mother promptly writes their names in big, looping letters on their tablets for them to copy.

The girls begin writing slowly as their mother watches. After awhile, they open workbooks.

"What are the things that begin with the letter T?" Barbara Haake asks her daughter Barbie.

"Boy," Barbie says, grinning shyly.
Going to home school

The Haake children and other children whose families travel with the carnival learn in home school so they can stay on the road with their parents and study in a trailer or bus off the side of a midway.

Other families with children travel only during the summer months so the children don't miss any school. Eli and Jeremy Barnes stay home in Florida with their mother, Debi Dolce, when school is in session and let their stepfather, Nick Dolce, tend to business on the road.

"The kids in the carnival business get a good education because they travel around a lot," Myers said. "We play Lexington and Harrodsburg, so they know Fort Harrod and they know about Daniel Boone."

History isn't the only lesson they learn. One carnival worker says the children "get quite an education out here on the road: How to take a licking and keep on ticking."

HEAVEN

ON

EARTH

PINEVILLE

1993
"Shhhh, it's starting," Judy Rice said. But first-timers at the Mountain Laurel Festival might feel as if they've showed up right in the middle of something with no beginning or end.

The festival started 62 years ago, and nobody here can conceive of a May without it. It's called tradition, said former festival queen candidate Amy Redmond, who was at yesterday's pageant.

Redmond is Rice's niece. Rice was squeezing a friend's arm as if that would choke off the other woman's words. Shhhh. Master of Ceremonies George Zack, director of the Lexington Philharmonic Orchestra, had just started speaking.

The coronation of a festival queen, chosen from candidates representing colleges across the state, would not be far away.

Above the little amphitheater, over a clearing at Pine Mountain State Resort Park, the sun was coming out. The air over Pine Mountain was steamy and heavy and still.

Earlier in the day, a brief summer storm had swept over Pineville, causing people to linger in the Dairy Queen on U.S. 25E. Now the sky was bright and hot. What you had was the kind of day that'll make a mountain laurel bloom.

Some umbrellas came down, but others stayed up as parasols. The sun's presence was appreciated as much as the governor's. Gov. Brereton Jones was on hand to crown the new queen.

"This year I think the festival was perfect," Redmond said. "We had a good parade, the floats were good, the park is beautiful, the governor's here. It's like everything is going our way."

The Mountain Laurel Festival unofficially is the second-biggest annual festival in the state. Only the Kentucky Derby Festival outranks it, Rice said.

This year's festival began Thursday with official opening ceremonies, a picnic and fireworks. Friday there was a golf tournament, hiking, arts and crafts exhibits, a concert, dinner, a ball and a coal-mine rescue competition.

Yesterday morning there was a parade through Pineville. Lexington socialite and horsewoman Marylou Whitney was the grand marshal. The convention center at the park lodge was renamed after Whitney's late husband, C.V. Whitney.

Next on the agenda was the coronation of a new queen -- the highlight of the weekend. By the time the ceremonies began yesterday afternoon, several hundred people had settled onto the wooden benches of the amphitheater.

"It's really a beautiful thing," Brenda Jones said of the festivities, "when the sun's shining."

Rice and Jones, who are sisters, attend every year. "We've had a lot of family in this," Jones said.

Rice opened her purse. Her daughter, Jill, stood in front of her wanting money for a movie. She was going with a friend to the Middlesboro Cinema 4.

Judy gave her daughter a five-dollar bill, then began fanning with her program. Most Saturdays she would spend the afternoon at the Middlesboro Mall, too. But on this one she sat among several hundred other people wondering who would be queen. Nobody would know until the candidates walked out of the woods.

The winner would return to the stage at the rear of the line, and everybody would know immediately who was queen. No announcement. Just a place at the back of the line. That's just the way it's always been done.

"It's just the warmest feeling to be here," Redmond said. "It's your old Southern beauty pageant. There are no score sheets, no talent show. It's just fun."

Redmond left the bench and climbed onto a boulder at the back of the amphitheater to get a better view.

From the higher vantage point, she could see the pond that separates the first row from the clearing where the candidates are being introduced. She liked the way the white gowns of the candidates were reflected in the water. "Just like a mirror," she said.

The treetops and the place where they touch the sky also were reflected in the pond, creating a little patch of heaven right on the face of the earth.

A

HAUNTING

SILENCE

LEXINGTON

1993
Six witnesses painted a chilling portrait of Bill Canan yesterday, but it was the haunting silence of a seventh -- Melanie Flynn -- on which prosecutors seemed to hang their case against releasing Canan before his trial on federal drug charges.

A former colleague on the Lexington police force testified that Canan once admitted killing Flynn, whose disappearance in January 1977 remains one of Lexington's darkest mysteries.

Flynn was a 24-year-old secretary for the Kentucky High School Athletic Association when she failed to come home from work one winter night. She never turned up again.

Several months after Flynn's disappearance, Canan told newspaper reporters that she had worked as an undercover agent for him and provided him with information about drug users and pushers.

Canan said that Flynn had agreed to help him after he had built a case against her for possession of marijuana.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Jane Graham yesterday invoked Flynn's name several times during almost 3 1/2 hours of testimony presented to portray Canan as a man too dangerous to be released on bond.

The first time Graham mentioned Flynn, Canan's court-appointed defense attorney, Fred E. Peters, objected. But U.S. Magistrate Judge James Cook overruled Peters, opening the way for testimony about the Flynn case and allowing the hearing to take an unexpectedly dark turn.

"I said, 'Who killed Melanie Flynn?' " former Lexington police officer George Umstead testified, describing a conversation he had with Canan a few years ago.

"He just smiled. I asked him if he killed Melanie. He just . . . nodded his head, as if saying, 'Yes.' "

Umstead later testified that a mutual friend, drug smuggler Andrew Thornton, once told Umstead that Canan had killed Flynn "because he loved her."

Umstead, who is serving a 36-month sentence on federal drug charges, recounted buying cocaine from Canan for a Kentucky Derby party in 1984. He testified yesterday that he was cooperating with federal authorities in the case against Canan as part of a plea agreement.

Umstead was one of two witnesses who testified that Canan had tried to scare them from cooperating with authorities in their own drug cases because Canan feared he would be implicated. In 1991, Canan relayed a threatening message through a mutual friend that "people had a way of disappearing," Umstead said.

Witnesses portrayed Canan as a vengeful man at the center of a tangled web of fear and intimidation.

William Welsh, a special agent for the FBI in Lexington, testified that a search of Canan's apartment on Garden Springs Drive had turned up 20 to 25 weapons, including a variety of loaded guns and rifles; several small, spiked martial-arts weapons called "throwing stars"; a blow gun with steel-tipped darts; and stiletto knives.

Canan was wearing one of the guns, a derringer, when police arrested him. "He always carried a pistol on his hip," Umstead testified.

Police searching Canan's home also found a police badge, a bag of cocaine, $200 in cash and hundreds of cassette tapes.

Welsh testified he had tried listening to four or five of the tapes but could not discern their content because they were recorded at several different speeds.

Also found in Canan's home were books detailing how to convert a shotgun into a grenade launcher; how to build a silencer; and how to use explosives. One three-volume set was titled "How to Kill."

A hand-drawn and hand-lettered chart labeled "Canan's Alley" showed a large bull's-eye whose rings were adorned with photographs of Lexington police Capt. John Bizzack; former Commonwealth's Attorney Larry Roberts; former Mayor James Amato; Fayette County Clerk Donald Blevins; and former assistant police chief Frank Fryman.

Bizzack's photo was in the hand-drawn cross hairs of a rifle, and several others, including Amato and Roberts, had what appeared to be bullet holes drawn between their eyes, Welsh said.

It was not made clear yesterday why Canan had the poster, but many of those depicted on it were in office when Canan was a police officer in the 1970s. Canan, 47, was fired from the police department in 1979 for insubordination and inefficiency.

Welsh said federal agents had begun another investigation prompted by notes found in Canan's apartment that suggest he was under contract to kill someon else's wife and make it look like an accident.

"I think he's a clearly dangerous person," Umstead said. "I'm scared to death of him. For my family's sake. And for mine."

Canan, wearing a blue windbreaker, black Lee jeans and shackles on his legs, rocked incessantly in a chair at the defense table and repeatedly whispered to Peters as he listened to testimony. Canan was arrested at home Friday and charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine and obstruction of justice by threatening to kill a witness against him.

That witness, Robert V. Scott of Lexington, testified yesterday that Canan in early 1990 had forced his way into Scott's apartment one night as Scott's wife and two children slept.

" 'I'm not scared of dying, and I'm not scared of you or George Umstead," Scott testified Canan had told him.

Canan proceeded to tell Scott he would leave town if he had to and that he had deposited his money in two separate accounts in case he was caught.

Scott testified that Canan had become suspicious of Scott after police arrested Scott on drug charges in January 1991.

Canan sold 6 to 8 ounces of cocaine to Scott twice between Dec. 29, 1989, and Jan. 2, 1990, Scott and Welsh testified.

"He said one good thing about bombs is you can be done (planting them) a long time before they go off, and innocent people sometimes get hurt," Scott said. "He said he'd blow up the federal building and the D.A.'s office, too, if he had to."

Scott testified that Canan gave him $200 to leave town the day before his sentencing.

Peters asked Umstead whether he or federal authorities had broached the topic of Canan. Umstead said he could not remember.

"You knew they were interested in him, though?" Peters said.

"Everybody is," Umstead said.

SWAN

SONG

FOR

A

WHITE

KNIGHT

LEXINGTON

1993
Fayette County Attorney Norrie Wake, who has performed in theatrical productions and made public appearances as Thomas Jefferson, is known to have a penchant for drama.

But his indictment Tuesday on federal charges that he used a kickback scheme among employees in the county attorney's office to repay campaign debt has raised a troubling question: Was Norrie Wake's performance as Norrie Wake the greatest act of all?

Friends and detractors said last week that they found it hard to believe that Wake -- so widely perceived as a tough prosecutor "charging across the plain on his white horse to do good" -- would resort to the kinds of things charged in the indictment.

Wake, who turned 50 Friday, is accused of giving staff members $35,000 in raises that they kicked back to help retire his 1985 campaign debt. He is charged with mail fraud, theft of government money and conspiracy. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Wake, who did not return a reporter's calls last week, has called the charges "ill founded" and said they are the result of a "political witch hunt" by Lexington lawyer Margaret Kannensohn, his opponent in the May 25 Democratic primary. There is no Republican opposition.

Kannensohn responded to Wake's charges by saying they were "patently ludicrous." Democratic state Sen. Michael R. Moloney, a Lexington lawyer, gave them even less credence.

"That's about as silly as anything I've ever heard," Moloney said. "The U.S. attorney's office and federal grand jury don't get involved in little ol' county attorney races."

But Fayette County Jailer Ray Sabbatine said he would not be surprised if Wake has fallen victim to politics. Sabbatine, a friend of Sheriff Harold Buchignani, thinks the campaign tactics Wake used in support of Buchignani's challenger in the last election were "dirty and unfair." That challenger was George Ewen, a member of Wake's staff.

"I feel at this point that (Wake) was easy prey for political criticism as a result of the way previous races had been run by his administration," Sabbatine said. "They ran what I considered some mudslinging races. What goes around comes around."
Riding a white horse
Wake has played hardball for years with political opponents, deadbeat parents and any number of people who have strayed from the straight and narrow.

That life finally lashed a hard line drive straight back at Wake is not as surprising as the direction of the hit, former Attorney General Fred Cowan said. Wake's indictment came as a "major shock," Cowan said.

"I can't imagine Norrie Wake intentionally doing anything in violation of the law," he said.

Cowan said he wouldn't be surprised to discover politics behind Wake's downfall.

"Norrie speaks his mind," Cowan said. "He is forceful. He will make decisions that may upset people.

"It's been my observation over the years that you folks over in Lexington play politics pretty rough."

David Bondurant, who played in the Lafayette High School band with Wake more than 30 years ago, said Wake might be

paying the price for not "kowtowing to the political base, the good ol' boy network in Lexington."

Wake chose to surround himself with a relatively small, tightly knit group of supporters instead of building a broad political base, Bondurant said.

Wake's social circle is not so limited, however. One close friend, Nancy Reedy of Lexington, a fellow parishioner at Central Christian Church, said she does not believe the charges in the indictment.

"The best word you could use is, he's the 'goodest' person I've ever known," Reedy said. "He's a victim of something, and it has to be politics.

"I can't stand politics anyway. I happen to believe most politicians are crooks, and I've often joked with Norrie that he's the only honest one I've ever known."

And what is Wake's response? "He just laughs," Reedy said.

"Anything Norrie Wake did that wasn't legal would be a surprise to me," said former House Speaker Bobby Richardson, D-Glasgow, who became friends with Wake while the two were attending law school at the University of Kentucky.

Bondurant said he has lost no confidence in his friend. "I certainly would vote for him again," he said.

Bondurant told Wake as much when his friend paid a visit along the campaign trail.

"He said, 'I appreciate your help,' " Bondurant recalled. "Then he said words to the effect that he would get through this."

A thin line separates the rise and fall of Norrie Wake, who, Bondurant recalls, "came into the county attorney's office looking to correct everything."

"He's hard-working, always working for right. Not necessarily politically right. (But) he's sort of seen charging across the plain on his white horse to do good."

The rise and fall
Even though Wake's politics have made him few friends, his performance in office generally has earned him respect.

After the race for sheriff, during which Wake supported Ewen against Buchignani, "I had some tremendous ill feelings toward him," Sabbatine said. But Wake's work as county attorney won over both Sabbatine and Buchignani.

"The way in which he manages cases and his fairness in dealing with those cases has been impeccable," Sabbatine said. "It appears he treats everybody fairly whether you are influential in the community or not.

"If all the allegations are true, it surprises me a great deal. The county attorney's office as I see it today is about as fine as it's ever been. It operates extremely well. It operates efficiently."

Moloney does not agree. "I think everybody knows of the tremendous growth in the size of that office," he said. "It's probably tripled.

"Our case load's been going up, but it hasn't been going up that much. It seems to me (the office is) growing faster than it should have."

Although Moloney said it comes as a surprise "any time you hear of an investigation of a public office," he takes the indictment seriously.

"As the allegations developed and you look at what is set forth in the indictment, it's obvious the federal government has conducted a very thorough investigation," he said.

Friends say Wake got a new trombone for Christmas one year while he was in high school, but he tumbled down the stairs and broke it. That's the only other time anyone can recall Wake's having fallen very far.

Until the last few weeks, Wake's star had been on a steady rise -- to the surprise of no one who knows him.

"I saw great things for him," said Virginia Smith, a family friend who has known Wake since he was a boy.

The life of Arthur Norrie Wake III -- son of vocalists and husband of a pianist who just happens to have been his high school sweetheart -- has been a life set to music. Only time will tell whether that's the sound of taps playing for his political career.

ON

A

RIDE

TO

IMMORTALITY

LEXINGTON

1993
Randy Romero has ridden in more than a half-dozen Derbies, but watching him yesterday morning you would think he never had seen a horse before.

"They even got the horseshoes and everything, huh? You see that?" he said, pointing to the bottom of a hoof.

Romero could hardly contain his admiration for the lifelike fantasy world of artist Gwen Reardon, who sculpted the bronze statues of seven horses and jockeys straining toward an imaginary finish line in Lexington's Thoroughbred Park.

Romero is one of seven successful jockeys who served as models for the figures forever frozen in Reardon's make-believe race. He and three others -- Don Brumfield, Jerry Bailey and Pat Day -- visited the year-old downtown park yesterday to see the statues and meet their maker.

Despite making their living astride racehorses, the jockeys marveled at the detail of the sculptures and passed their hands appreciatively over those things they long ago had lost sight of in the busy rhythm of days at the track: The lustrous feel of a leather riding boot; The rough weave of a blanket under a saddle; The stiff strength of the bridle.

"It's got everything in there," Romero said, peering up through the arms of one of the doubled-over bronze jockeys.

He was looking into his own face.

Reardon, who lives in Lexington, looked on in delight. She had invited the jockeys so she could watch their reaction. Day and Bailey had not visited the park before. "I wanted to meet them, and I wanted to see how they felt about this," she said. "They wanted it, too."

Bailey was taken with the park. "I think it's pretty neat," he said. "She did a great job. Everything looks authentic."

Reardon chose the week before the Derby to invite the jockeys to the park because all but Bill Shoemaker and Brumfield still ride.

"There aren't that many times in the year you have them all in one place," she said. "Derby time will do it."

Reardon had the jockeys all sign posters depicting the park, then gave a copy to each. She spent a lot of time explaining to them how the statues were made -- a complicated process using wax, clay and ceramic to make a mold.

"Un-bee-lieve-able," Romero said.

Reardon also spent some time explaining why the jockeys and their nameless mounts were placed in the order they appear in the park.

Then-Lexington Mayor Scotty Baesler drew the jockeys' names out of a hat to determine their spot in the race. Park visitors see the horses from the vantage point of a spectator in the infield, Reardon said . . .

At the wire, it's Romero on the outside, in a dead heat with Shoemaker! Day is in third, with Bailey and Craig Perret fighting for fourth! Brumfield is sixth, followed by Chris McCarron . . .

"I've got one horse beat, but this is the first time around," Bailey said, smiling. "I haven't even got my stick (whip) coiled yet."

The jockeys represented by Reardon's statues have more than 70 Derby starts and eight wins among them. At least four -- Romero, Day, Bailey and McCarro -- will ride in the Derby this year.

Each jockey who showed up at the park found his likeness by checking the rear waistband of the statues' pants, which customarily bears the rider's last name.

Brumfield, noting his horse lagging near the rear of the pack, said he preferred to think of the race as having just started.

"Did you find yourself?" Reardon asked him when he arrived.

"Yes, ma'am," Brumfield said. Then, nodding toward the horse-and-jockey statues, he added in a deadpan voice: "This is their first time around isn't it?"

As Romero arrived, he smiled when he realized he was in first place. "I hope to be that way the first Saturday in May," he said.

Day asked which horse was his, then spotted it and grinned.

"That's my nose," he said, stepping toward the horse and rider in third place.

The jockeys wandered among the statues, so taken by their detail that they hardly believed Reardon when she told them she had not created the sculptures by pouring bronze over the personal items they had sent her: riding boots, silks, saddles, goggles.

None of the articles could have withstood the intense heat of the molten metal, Reardon said. The statues are bronze -- nothing more, nothing less.

Bailey and Day lingered, running their fingers over boots and bridles, shaking their heads at how everything even felt right.

"You ride the first race, don't you?" Bailey asked Day, breaking the spell with a suggestion that maybe they should leave soon so they could put in another day's work at Keeneland.

Day was up in the first race, on a 7-2 pick called Sowhat'smyname. But he didn't seem in a hurry.

Day has ridden lots of great horses: Easy Goer. Unbridled. Distaff. Lil E. Tee. But the one in the park, the one that never will finish better than third, is the horse carrying him to immortality.

"There aren't an awful lot of people on this planet," Reardon said, "that are cast in bronze."