Kenneth L. Lay: A Chronology
The most reliable genealogies of Kenneth Lee Lay trace his ancestry back to a Jesse Lay, born about 1744 in Halifax County, Virginia. Jesse Lay may have been the son or grandson of David Lay from Wiltshire, England.
Prior to the Revolutionary War, Jesse Lay of Halifax County, VA, moves to Caswell County, North Carolina, in the north-central part of the colony. His son, Jesse Duncan Lay (b. 1766), moves farther west, to Wilkes County, NC, where his son John Michael Lay is born in 1790. John Michael Lay moves to Campbell County in northeastern Tennessee, where his son Thomas Lay is born in 1832.
After the death of his wife, Delilah Croley Lay, Thomas Lay remarries and moves with his son John Croley Lay, to Missouri. John Croley Lay, born circa 1850, is Ken Lay’s great-grandfather.
| 1874 | Andrew Jackson Lay, Ken Lay’s grandfather, is born in Texas County, MO, in the heart of the Ozarks. (The county seat is Houston.) Andrew Jackson Lay will die in 1949 (when Ken Lay is seven) on the farm where he spent his entire life. |
| 1895 | Andrew Jackson Lay marries Matilda Ellen Owens (b. 1876). |
| 1914 | October 3. Omer Lay, father of Ken Lay, is born to Andrew Jackson Lay and his wife in Solo, Texas County, MO. Omer (1914–99) is the 10th of their 11 children, of whom 7 boys survive into adulthood: Clarence Otto (1896–1975), Luther Henry (1898–1984), John Shelby (1899–1980), Ira (1901–73), Vester Euel (1907–1993), Omer, and Robert (1918–74). These will be Ken Lay’s 6 paternal uncles, and their children will be his first cousins on his father’s side. |
| 1916 | October 23. Ruth Ester Rees, mother of Ken Lay, is born to Joe Sievus Rees (also spelled Reese and Reece) and Rachel (née Ice) Rees in Tyrone, MO. Ruth (1916–1995) is the fifth of their six children: Ada (1903–97), Myrtle (1905–93), Virgil (1906–78), Bertha (1908–97), Ruth, and Ruby (1918–2005). These will be Ken Lay’s four aunts (five, counting their half-sister Ethel Ice [1898–1991]) and one maternal uncle. Their children will be his first cousins on his mother’s side. |
| 1937 | May 22. Omer Lay marries Ruth Ester Rees in Houston, Texas County, MO. The local newspaper calls their wedding the culmination of a childhood romance. |
| 1939 | May 9. Omer and Ruth Lay have their first child: a daughter, Bonnie Jean. |
| 1941 | June 20. FBI Special Agent Rowen Ayers, stationed in Jefferson City, MO, marries FBI clerk Eleanor Byarlay. They will be Ken Lay’s first father- and mother-in-law. |
| 1942 | April 15. Kenneth Lee Lay is born at home to Omer and Ruth (Rees) Lay in Tyrone, Texas County, MO. In the first six years of Ken’s life, the family lived in four small Missouri towns within 15 miles of each other: Tyrone, Cabool, Houston, and Raymondville. |
| 1945 | October 8. Ken Lay’s younger sister, Sharon Sue Lay, is born to Omer and Ruth Lay; Sharon, their second daughter, is their third and last child. |
| 1947 | Omer Lay settles his family in Raymondville, MO (a Texas County village of fewer than 200 residents), where Ruth’s older brother Virgil also lives. Omer Lay operates a feedstore but also buys farmers’ chickens and sells them to stores in nearby towns. He is wiped out financially when a truck crashes while carrying a load of his chickens. He then takes a job as a traveling salesman in Mississippi for the Home Comfort Stove Co., moving his family from town to town. |
| 1948 | Omer Lay and his family move to Rush Hill, MO, where he works in sales for Montgomery Ward in the nearby town of Mexico. (He also works on the farm of his brother-in-law, Othel L. Hobbs, husband to his wife Ruth’s older sister Bertha Ellen.) Rush Hill, where the Lays would live for almost 10 years, is smaller than Raymondville, with about 120 residents, but it is outside the Ozarks. |
| 1950 | Circa. Ken Lay works three newspaper routes, mows lawns, shovels snow, and stacks hay bales to help out his family. He attends the three-room Rush Hill elementary school, which has one teacher for first and second grades; one for third, fourth, and fifth; and one for sixth, seventh, and eighth. Omer Lay answers a call to preach at the nondenominational Rush Hill Community Church, which he continues doing until leaving the community in 1958. |
| 1954 | Circa. Ken Lay (age 12) gets a full-time summer job at 25¢ an hour, working 16 hours a day on a farm. From age 12 on, Ken Lay’s jobs cover his personal expenses, apart from room and board. Also in 1954, Omer Lay’s house gets indoor plumbing. |
| 1956 | Ken Lay (age 14) enters the Audrain County high school, the Community R-6 School. |
| 1957 | June. Ken Lay’s older sister, Bonnie Jean, graduates from the Community R-6 School of Audrain County and prepares to enter Christian College, a conservative women’s school in Columbia, MO. Omer Lay moves his family from Rush Hill to Columbia so that Bonnie Jean can save money by living at home while she attends college and so that his younger children can attend a better high school. Omer Lay becomes a security guard at the University of Missouri; Ruth Lay works in its bookstore. Omer also sells farm machinery on the side and serves as a preacher and Sunday school teacher at Bethel Baptist Church in Columbia. September. Ken Lay (age 15) enters David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, where he sings in the choirs, plays in a trombone quartet, serves as Homecoming Chairman, is elected to the National Honor Society, and receives the American History Award. |
| 1959 | June 6. Bonnie Jean Lay marries James Richard Bourne, a senior at the University of Missouri. The wedding announcement states that, in September, the couple will enroll at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, TX, where she will work toward a BS in music, and he will study for the ministry. |
| 1960 | May. Ken Lay graduates from Hickman High School. His grades place him 10th in a class of 276. September. Ken enters the University of Missouri in Columbia. Attending college is a family first (shared with his two sisters) in relation to his 4 grandparents, both parents, 12 aunts and uncles, and 40 first cousins. While school is paid for from scholarships, Ken works full time during the summer and part time (15–20 hours per week) during the school year to meet his personal expenses. |
| 1962 | Lay, though only a junior, is elected president of the Zeta Phi chapter of Beta Theta Pi fraternity at the University of Missouri, the largest fraternity on campus and a noted “dry” fraternity. |
| 1963 | Lay receives his BA in economics, with a GPA over 3.6, graduating Phi Beta Kappa. His college mentor is economics professor Pinkney Walker. Sharon Lay marries Charles Edward Powers; both are 18 years old and just graduated from high school. Later in life, she will marry Joe Ellis, a prominent cosmetic dentist in the Houston area. |
| 1965 | June. Lay joins Humble Oil & Refining (now part of ExxonMobil) as an economist in the corporate planning department. After seven years, Omer Lay (age 51) resigns his role as preacher at the Bethel Baptist Church in Columbia. August. Ken Lay receives his MA in economics (with honors), also from the University of Missouri. His GPA is over 3.8. September. Lay begins the PhD program in economics at the University of Houston. |
| 1966 | January. Linda Phillips (who would later marry Ken Lay) marries Robert F. Herrold. In September, Robert and Linda Herrold have their first child, a daughter, Robyn Anne, in Washington, DC. June 18. In Jefferson City, MO, Ken Lay marries Judith Ayers, who graduated in 1966 from the University of Missouri as a journalism major and who had earlier sat in front of Ken Lay in the college’s French class. Her bridesmaids include Mrs. William Morgan (Anne Lamkin) and Mrs. Richard Kinder (Sara Lu Scholes), sorority sisters from Kappa Alpha Theta. Ken Lay’s ushers are his brother-in-law Edward Powers (husband of Sharon Sue Lay) and the bride’s brother, USN Lt. James Ayers, a 1964 graduate of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. His best man is fraternity brother Robert Healy, who will go on to spend his entire career as a chemical engineer at ExxonMobil in Houston, TX, specializing in enhanced oil recovery. |
| 1967 | A collection of speeches by Humble Oil CEO Mike Wright, mostly ghostwritten by Ken Lay, is published as The Business of Business by McGraw-Hill. |
| 1968 | January. Facing conscription, Ken Lay enlists in the US Navy Officer Candidate School in Newport, RI. In May, he is commissioned as a naval officer. In June, on the recommendation of Pinkney Walker, he is transferred to the Pentagon to work with the assistant secretary of the Navy for financial management, and there he devises an improved military-purchasing system. August 15. Mark Kenneth Lay is born to Ken and Judie Lay in Arlington, VA. November 21. A Texas County newspaper’s description of a Lay family gathering mentions Mr. and Mrs. Omer Lay, Miss Sharon Powers of Columbia, and Mrs. Bonnie Bourne and children of St. Joseph. Bonnie Bourne ultimately gets her PhD in education from the University of Missouri. |
| 1970 | June. Lay receives a PhD in economics from the University of Houston. His dissertation is “The Measurement of the Timing of the Economic Impact of Defense Procurement Activity: An Analysis of the Vietnam Buildup.” 1970–73 Lay teaches night classes as a lecturer and then as an assistant professor at George Washington University, in Washington, DC. Among his favorite books is Peter Drucker’s The Age of Discontinuity. |
| 1971 | January 3. Ken and Judie Lay have their second child, Elizabeth Ayers Lay, in Bethesda, MD. April. Lieutenant Ken Lay is honorably discharged from the Navy after 39 months of service. May. Lay joins the Federal Power Commission (now the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) as technical assistant to the vice chairman, Pinkney Walker, his mentor in economics at the University of Missouri. Lay becomes a de facto commissioner, with Walker absent to care for his ailing wife. |
| 1972 | October. Lay joins the Department of the Interior as deputy undersecretary of energy, a new position charged with overseeing energy policy across federal departments. He takes the lead in drafting President Richard Nixon’s first presidential message on energy, delivered April 18, 1973. Lay also works on petroleum-allocation issues with the White House. |
| 1973 | Ken Lay meets Jack Bowen, CEO of Florida Gas, while moderating a meeting on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, near Florida. A few months later, he will write to Bowen about the possibility of getting a private-sector job with Florida Gas. Lay’s job search would result in 15 offers. |
| 1974 | January. Lay joins Jack Bowen’s Florida Gas Company in Winter Park, FL, as director of corporate planning. The unit is later called corporate development. CEO Jack Bowen advocates for his hiring; COO Shelby Sullivan is less enthusiastic. After Lay receives promotions, he and Judie will buy a house in the exclusive Via Lugano neighborhood and a condo at Melbourne Beach, FL. They attend Asbury United Methodist Church. For relaxation, Ken Lay jogs, plays tennis, golfs, and reads thrillers by John D. MacDonald, a Harvard MBA author whose Florida-based stories often include elaborate business swindles. September. Lay is named vice president of Transgulf Pipeline Company. |
| 1975 | May. Lay is named vice president of corporate development at Florida Gas. October. Lay is named senior vice president of Florida Gas Transmission Company, with responsibility for supply and engineering. |
| 1976 | September. Lay is named president of Florida Gas Transmission Company and executive vice president of its parent, Florida Gas Company. |
| 1978 | March. Lay is named board director of the Gas Research Institute, a position he holds until August 1986. |
| 1979 | May. Lay is named president of Florida Gas Company. August. Continental Group buys Florida Gas Company and renames it Continental Resources Company. Lay is named president. November. Lay is named to the additional post of corporate vice president for Continental Group. Lay is named chairman of the Slurry Transport Association. |
| 1980 | July. Lay is named board director of the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, where he would serve as chairman in 1989. October. Lay is named board director of the American Gas Association, a position he would hold until September 1986. |
| 1981 | April. Lay resigns from Continental Resources Company. Bill Morgan becomes the company’s senior executive in Winter Park. April. Ken Lay files for a divorce from Judie Lay. May 1. Lay joins Transco Companies Inc. as president and chief operating officer, under chairman and CEO Jack Bowen, the man who hired Lay to join Florida Gas. June. Judie Lay suffers a nervous breakdown and is committed to a psychiatric hospital. The Lays’ divorce trial is postponed. July. Lay is named president and COO of Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, an interim position he holds until April 30, 1982. |
| 1982 | February. Lay is named board director of the National Energy Foundation, a position he would hold until February 1988. Lay also joins the board of directors of First City National Bank of Houston. May. Lay is named interim President and CEO of Transco Exploration Company (TXC), in addition to other titles. June. With their divorce trial scheduled to begin in one week, Ken and Judie Lay reach a settlement. July. Ken Lay marries his former secretary, Linda Phillips Herrold, in Houston. Linda has three children from her first marriage: Robyn Anne (b. 1965), Todd David (b. 1969), and Robert Ray “Beau” (b. 1971). |
| 1983 | July. A feature in the Houston Chronicle business section, “Transco’s Ken Lay Credited as Natural Gas Innovator,” would be the first of many positive business articles written on him in the next years. November. Lay joins the board of directors of the American Council for Capital Formation. |
| 1984 | June 6. Houston Natural Gas announces the election of Ken Lay as chairman, president, and CEO, effective June 8 (Friday), the day Lay’s resignation from Transco is effective. June 8. Ken Lay enters into a five-year employment contract with HNG providing a minimum salary of $510,000 per annum, increasing at 10 percent per year. Lay will void the agreement in February 1986 and enter into a new five-year agreement three months later. December 30. Ken Lay is featured (with picture) in a New York Times business story: “The Maverick Who Transformed an Industry.” |
| 1985 | Lay is elected a board member of Texas Commerce Bank. January. Lay is named a director of the American Petroleum Institute, a position he would resign from in December 1987. July 16. Ken Lay is named president and chief operating officer of HNG/InterNorth. November 12. Lay is named president and chief executive officer of HNG/InterNorth, following Sam Segnar’s dismissal. Bill Strauss becomes chairman. |
| 1986 | February. Ken Lay voids his (1984) employment contract. He later turns down his $187,500 bonus award for 1986. February 11. Lay is named president, chairman, and chief executive officer of HNG/InterNorth, following Bill Strauss’s resignation. April 10. HNG/InterNorth becomes Enron; Lay is named chairman and chief executive officer. May. Ken Lay enters into a new contract with Enron providing for compensation in the event of an involuntary termination resulting from a change of control. |
| 1987 | May. Ken Lay enters into a four-year employment contract with Enron providing a minimum salary of $625,000 per annum, a loan commitment of $1,500,000, and other provisions. Lay is elected a board director of Compaq Computers. |
| 1988 | Ken Lay joins the board of regents of the University of Houston System. He would later donate monies to fund two (Ken Lay) chairs in the political science and the economics departments. In 1995, he would receive UH’s outstanding-alumni award. Lay is named Houston Finance Chairman for George Bush for President. |
| 1989 | September. Ken Lay enters into a five-year employment contract with Enron providing a minimum salary of $750,000 per annum, stock option grants of 250,000 shares, and other provisions and financial incentives. |
| 1990 | Ken Lay is named cochair of the Economic Summit of Industrialized Nations–Houston Host Committee. April. Lay is named to the 28-member Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, one of two representatives from the oil and gas industry. (He is already a member of the National Petroleum Council.) |
| 1991 | October. An in-depth business feature in the business section of the Houston Chronicle, “What Makes Kenneth Lay Run?” identifies the subject as multifaceted and enigmatic. December. Lay rules out taking a cabinet-secretary position in the Bush administration after meeting with the president. |
| 1992 | Ken Lay receives an honorary LLD from the University of Missouri. Lay is elected a board director of Trust Company of the West. Lay is named chairman of the Host Committee for the 1992 Republican National Convention. |
| 1993 | June. Ken Lay is named to the 25-person President’s Council on Sustainable Development in a White House ceremony in Washington, DC. Lay is elected a board director of Eli Lilly Company. |
| 1994 | February. Ken Lay enters into a new five-year employment contract with Enron providing a minimum salary of $990,000 per annum, stock option grants of 1,200,000 shares, and other provisions. Lay has the option to terminate the agreement as of February 8, 1997. |
| 1995 | March 10. Ken Lay’s mother, Ruth Rees Lay, dies at 79 in Columbia, MO. |
| 1996 | November 26. Lay agrees to a new five-year contract extension as chairman and chief executive officer. Rich Kinder resigns as president of Enron, effective January 1, 1997. Lay announces that he will take on the post of president. December. Jeff Skilling is named to be president and chief operating officer, effective January 1, 1997. Lay’s new five-year employment contract with Enron provides for a minimum annual salary of $1,200,000 and stock options of 1,275,000 shares, among other provisions and financial incentives. Business Week names Ken Lay as one of America’s top 25 managers for 1996. |
| 1997 | Ken Lay receives four major recognitions: Ben K. Miller Memorial International Business Award (University of Colorado), Private Sector Council Leadership Award, Rotary Club Distinguished Citizen of the Year, and election to the Texas Business Hall of Fame. October. Ken Lay presents the Enron Prize for Distinguished Public Service to Mikhail Gorbachev at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Houston, TX. |
| 1998 | Ken Lay is elected into the membership of the Horatio Alger Society. He would join the board and serve as executive vice president from May 2000 until April 2002. Ken Lay receives an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from the University of Houston. |
| 1999 | February 12. Omer Lay, Ken Lay’s father, dies at age 84. He is buried in the Bethel Baptist Church of Columbia, MO, where he had preached. Ken Lay receives two honorary degrees: doctor of social sciences from Brunel University (London) and doctor of humane letters from Oswego (NY) State University. |
| 2000 | April 7. Ken Lay throws out the ceremonial first pitch to begin the Houston Astros season at the new $265 million Enron Field. Lay, in fact, is credited with the referendum vote for the stadium that would retain the Houston Astros. |
| 2001 | February. Skilling becomes Enron’s CEO; Lay remains as its chairman. |
| 2002 | January 23. Ken Lay resigns from Enron Corp., which had declared bankruptcy the month before. February. Called to testify before Congress, Lay pleads the Fifth Amendment, although Skilling does not. |
| 2004 | July 8. Ken Lay is indicted by a grand jury on multiple counts of deceiving the SEC and the investing public about the true performance of Enron’s businesses. |
| 2005 | December 13. With his trial set to begin the next month, Ken Lay delivers a speech to the Houston Forum: “Guilty, Until Proven Innocent.” |
| 2006 | January 30. The trial of Lay and Skilling begins in Houston. US Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer later writes (in Skilling v. United States [2010]) that she is “doubtful that [the] jury was indeed free from the deep-seated animosity that pervaded the community.” But the Court’s majority rejects Skilling’s claim that the trial should have been held outside Houston. July 5. A biblical 40 days and 40 nights after his conviction, Ken Lay dies, at age 64, in the night, at a friend’s vacation home in Aspen, CO, of a heart ailment that he has long kept secret. Judge Simeon Lake rules that, under the doctrine of abatement ab initio, not only is Lay’s conviction voided but also the legal standing of his case is as though he had never been charged. Long-time Enron executive Mark Frevert calls it a pardon from God. July 9. A Sunday memorial service for Ken Lay is held in Aspen, CO, where he died on vacation. Only 200 people, all family and friends, are permitted to attend. July 12. A memorial service for Ken Lay is held in Houston. The service is attended by former President George H. W. Bush and former Secretary of State James Baker III. Lay’s stepson David Herrold reads a passage from Psalms (New International Version, 18: 3, 19) that he said was among the last entries Ken Lay wrote in a notebook he carried with him: “I called to the Lord who is worthy of praise and I am saved from my enemies…. He brought me out into a spacious place. He rescued me because He delighted in me.” Lay’s body is cremated and his ashes spread in the Aspen countryside. |
| 2011 | The Enron Creditors Recovery Corp. settles its suit against Linda Lay and Ken Lay’s estate because Linda Lay has “extremely limited” assets and the estate is insolvent (Reuters, June 20, 2011). |
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