The Good Ones

Eight emails from March 2000 to January 2002 – from peak Enron to two months after bankruptcy. Arranged in the order things fell apart.

The Body Shop

Ann Mora managed the Enron fitness center from 1991 to 2001. She was fresh out of college when she started. On January 23, 2001 – with the stock at $80 and Andrew Fastow’s CFO of the Year award still warm – she sent her farewell.

The Body Shop was one of the few spaces at Enron that cut across the hierarchy. VPs and admins used the same equipment, took the same classes, sweated through the same 6 AM step routines. Mora ran it for nearly a decade. Her goodbye went to the distribution list of everyone who had ever swiped a badge at the front desk.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_lokey-t_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2102724

She was support staff. She never touched a commodity or structured a deal. And yet: “I truly believe that it has helped make me the strong, confident, successful woman I am today.” The company’s fitness instructor believed Enron had made her who she was. She left on her own terms, in January 2001, to manage her own gym. She got out with her pride intact and her memories fond.

Remember the Body Shop. It comes back later.

“Thank You for Taking a Chance on Me”

On March 9, 2000, Janel Guerrero wrote to Steven Kean and Richard Shapiro in Government Affairs. She had been with the department for three years. She was leaving for the emissions trading desk – a commercial role, a step up. But before she went, she sat down to say what most people only think.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_kean-s_001.pst') WHERE node_id = 2113732

“If I crater, you and Rick will let me move back home.” That line says more about the management culture in Kean and Shapiro’s group than any HR document could. Guerrero knew she could fail and still be welcome. She trusted these people enough to say so out loud in writing.

This is what mentorship looks like when it works. Someone shows up knowing nothing about an industry. Three years later, she’s ready for a commercial role. She doesn’t take the credit. She gives it to the people who gave her the freedom to learn. March 2000. The stock was at $70. Everything was still possible.

“I Answer to a Higher Authority Than Our Stock Price”

October 23, 2001. The SEC had opened its inquiry the day before. Andrew Fastow was about to be removed as CFO. The stock had lost two-thirds of its value in eight days. Ken Lay gave a speech to employees that morning. That afternoon, Sherry Butler wrote to him.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_lay-k_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2161636

Butler did not mention trading, or mark-to-market, or special purpose entities. She mentioned floods. She mentioned 9/11. She mentioned the community work Enron employees did outside the building. Her version of Enron had nothing to do with the one that was about to appear on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

“I feel just as successful today as a year ago because I answer to a higher authority than our stock price.” The stock was at $16. In five weeks it would be at $0.26. She was measuring by a different instrument, and by that instrument, she was right where she had always been.

Reflections and Feedback

November 15, 2001. One week after Enron restated earnings back to 1997. The Dynegy merger was still technically alive. At 5:57 in the morning, Rick Craig, a mid-level pipeline employee, sat down and wrote to Stanley Horton, CEO of Enron Transportation Services.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_horton-s_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2186788

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_horton-s_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2186788

“Had others run their business units the way you have run the pipes, I truly belive that we would not be where we are at today.” Craig knew. The pipeline division was Enron’s original business – natural gas infrastructure, the unsexy part that actually made money. Horton’s people knew their CEO had run an honest operation inside a company that, elsewhere, had not.

Horton replied at 1:44 PM. Eight hours after Craig’s dawn letter, seven words.

“Even During the Last Few Days”

November 14, 2001. Jeff Royed resigned from Enron Risk to take a job at Energy USA over in the Galleria. He wrote to his colleague Jay Reitmeyer from his personal email, a self-deprecating note about trading up for a “smaller, less sexier and more conservative company.”

Reitmeyer wrote back: the departure had shocked people. He didn’t see it coming. Royed’s follow-up that evening was the kind of thing people say when they leave a place they genuinely loved, even when they know the place is dying.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_reitmeyer-j_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2109252

A nine-to-ten-hour day at his new company constituted “a long day.” At Enron, that was a short one. He was escaping to better hours and better pay, and the thing he led with was that he was going to miss people. “Even during the last few days with all of this merger talk going on.” Even while the Dynegy deal was cratering and the earnings restatement was a week old. Even then, it was fun. Or at least the people were.

Christmas in Bankruptcy

On December 17, 2001 – two weeks after Enron filed for bankruptcy, two weeks after the mass layoff that sent 4,000 people home with $4,500 in severance – Anne Ring’s Aunt Mary wrote from her personal AOL account. She had been worried. She wanted Anne and Dick to know they were welcome to visit.

Anne’s reply was honest in the way people are honest with family. Not with the guarded optimism of the all-hands meeting or the brittle composure of the exit interview, but with the exhaustion of someone who has been living inside the biggest bankruptcy in American history and can’t pretend anymore.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_ring-a_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2098020

“I felt sad and guilty because I still had a job.” Anne kept hers. Dick’s division was shut down. He was staying on as a “key person” to close the business – which meant he was being paid to dismantle what he’d spent his career building. They sold their Enron stock early enough to be okay financially, which is its own quiet drama: they saw something, or got lucky, or both. Michele was disappointed they weren’t coming home for Christmas. Dick was on call.

The postscript is the line that stays. “Next time I write I promise to be more upbeat.” As if she owed her aunt something better than the truth.

“The Straw That Broke the Camel’s Back”

December 9, 2001. One week after bankruptcy. Nelda Shealy had been at Enron for twenty years. She was there when InterNorth and Houston Natural Gas merged to become Enron. She had survived every restructuring, every strategy pivot, every CEO. She had a routine: arrive at 5:30 AM, work out at the Body Shop before the trading floor opened, shower, start the day.

On Friday morning she came in and found a note on the door. The Body Shop was closing at 7:30 PM Thursday. It was already shut.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_lay-k_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2180004

In January, Ann Mora left the Body Shop on her own terms, proud of the programs she built, blessed by the members she served. Eleven months later, a twenty-year veteran arrived at 5:30 AM and found a note taped to the door.

It was not the stock price that broke Nelda Shealy. Not the restatements, not the SEC inquiry, not the bankruptcy filing, not the layoffs. It was the closed gym. The small daily ritual that meant the building was still a workplace and not a crime scene. When that was gone, she found a place to shower and cried for two hours.

“I believe I would be blessed even if I didn’t have a job.” She wrote that at 10:31 on a Sunday night, from a Yahoo address, to the CEO of a bankrupt company.

“Good Luck to All of Us”

January 29, 2002. Seven weeks after bankruptcy. Zhiyun Yang’s last day would be Thursday. The reason was not performance, not restructuring, not layoffs. The reason was a visa.

With Enron in bankruptcy, the company could no longer sponsor his work authorization. U.S. immigration law does not distinguish between a company that fires you and a company that ceases to exist. Yang had to leave the country.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_white-s_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2166372

He was not saying goodbye to a job. He was saying goodbye to a country. Eighteen months of work, a career built in a language that was not his first, friendships formed in cubicles that no longer belonged to anyone – and the thing he expressed was gratitude. “I have nothing but joy.” His departure was a “painful decision,” as if it were a decision at all.

“Good luck to all of us.” Not good luck to you. To all of us. He was leaving, but he was still in it with them.

“Yo!”

Two days later, January 31, 2002. Susan Scott had left Enron. She was contemplating her next move, possibly packing boxes. That morning, her sister called on the cell phone and put her niece and nephew on to sing happy birthday. Scott pulled over and cried. Then she went to her computer and wrote to a friend who had moved to Park City, Utah, to start over.

SELECT sender_name, body FROM read_pst_messages('zl_scott-s_000.pst') WHERE node_id = 2120388

Two months after the largest bankruptcy in American history, on her birthday, Susan Scott sat down and wrote to a friend to say: I am proud of you. Dream. Imagine. Explore. The scale of the great things may be smaller than you imagined. Or grander.

The Emerson quote she chose that morning: “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” That is the entire premise of the company she just left, stripped of the stock options and the mark-to-market accounting and the special purpose entities. Someone to inspire you to be what you know you could be. Ann Mora believed it in January 2001. Janel Guerrero believed it in March 2000. Nelda Shealy still believed it in December 2001, crying in a bathroom after the gym closed. Susan Scott believed it on her birthday in January 2002, with no company left to believe in.

The difference is that Scott aimed the inspiration at one specific person, by name, and meant it. That is the version that survives.

See Also

• Stanley Horton – CEO of Enron Transportation Services, recipient of Rick Craig’s letter
• Steven Kean – Chief of Staff, Janel Guerrero’s mentor in Government Affairs
• Ken Lay – CEO, recipient of letters from Butler and Shealy
• Anne Ring – Enron employee, survivor’s guilt at Christmas
• Susan Scott – Post-Enron, birthday encouragement
• The True Believers – companion collection of letters to Ken Lay’s inbox
• Life During the Collapse – the same weeks, different register
• Enron Bankruptcy – filed December 2, 2001
• Dynegy Merger – the rescue that collapsed November 28
• Stock Price Collapse – from $90 to $0.26