These days, a fall from grace is generally a drawn-out affair, replete with legal appeals and bids for second or even third acts. For many Americans, Kenneth Lay's purgatory of disgrace and litigation may have seemed to go on longer than his glory days as the chief executive of Enron. But his death yesterday — after a trial in which he took the stand and was ultimately convicted on a long list of fraud and conspiracy charges — seemed very sudden indeed. It came before the expected final curtain — his sentencing and departure for prison.
Victims of Enron's spectacular collapse may feel cheated that the company's public face and one of its leading architects died in comfort, in upscale Aspen, Colo., without ever serving a day for his many crimes. Supporters are likely to say that prosecutors and the press hounded him to an early grave. From any perspective, this feels like an unfinished tale.
A true bootstraps story, Mr. Lay's life seemed at first scripted by Horatio Alger, now by Theodore Dreiser. With his folksy charm, the preacher's son who grew up poor in Missouri captivated the nation's attention in a way that Jeffrey Skilling, the former McKinsey consultant who was Mr. Lay's co-defendant, never could. A boardroom Icarus, Mr. Lay made a spectacular fortune and befriended the president before his beloved company evaporated, taking the dreams and retirement accounts of workers and investors with it and utterly changing the way corporate books and decisions are scrutinized.
An American symbol was extinguished in court; it was a man who died yesterday. Mr. Lay was fairly convicted of his crimes, but he was also a father and grandfather, whose family mourns his passing. He was headed for the penitentiary, but that did not have to be the end for him. He would have had an opportunity to use his personal skills to help other prisoners. And at 64 years, he might have had another shot at that third act after all. Michael Milken has devoted much of his resources to medical research since serving his sentence. What Ken Lay might have done we will never know. Chances are it would have been interesting.