Sunday, January 17, 1999
Middletons come out of scandal with dignity intact
BY KAREN SAMPLES
The Cincinnati Enquirer
FORT MITCHELL — It has all been so difficult, Mary Middleton says. She can't describe any moment as more wrenching than another.
She has two wishes now. One, that her friends and family know how much she has appreciated their kindness. And two, that her husband's name not appear in the newspapers quite so often. It's a new chapter in their lives, she says. A good time to move on.
Mrs. Middleton has never stopped doing so. Even during the worst of it — Clyde's resignation as judge-executive, his sentencing this month on a charge of official misconduct — she has been her usual, classy self.
This is fund-raiser season, so she is up to her eyeballs in requests for help. Everyone is having a silent auction, it seems, and Mrs. Middleton is trying to figure out what to donate this year.
Clyde, who will turn 71 this month, is volunteering at the Parish Kitchen once a week and learning the ropes on a new computer.
Tonight the couple will attend a Martin Luther King event at the cathedral in Covington. Monday, they'll be at the King Day parade, and Tuesday there's the annual Prayer for Christian Unity service sponsored by the Northern Kentucky Interfaith Commission.
If not for their very public difficulties in this last year, the Middletons might seem like any other active couple recently retired from public service.
Instead, they are retirees with some baggage.
There was Mr. Middleton's resignation in February, after years of riding with the snow plows every winter and bursting with pride for the work of county employees. He was a full-time judge-executive for Kenton County and loved it.
Then there was his October plea of guilty to official misconduct. Two weeks ago, he was sentenced to make $25,000 in restitution to Kenton County.
It was such a sad and abrupt end to a lifetime of public service, his wife says. Mr. Middleton spent two decades in the Kentucky Senate and more than seven years as Kenton judge-executive. He didn't even get to say goodbye to the employees.
Meanwhile, the developer who got assistance from Mr. Middleton — assistance that helped him bid on a building contract with the county — hasn't been charged with any crime. Bill Butler says he did nothing wrong, and a Kenton County grand jury didn't indict him.
The former judge-executive, on the other hand, faced mounting bills if he didn't end the legal maneuvering quickly, his wife says. So he acknowledged his mistake: He shouldn't have given Mr. Butler access to bid proposals from two competitors. All three were vying to build a new courthouse, and the selection process had been confusing from the start. But Mr. Middleton knew he shouldn't have met privately with the developer, and he admitted as much in court.
Through it all, Mary Middleton has been a rock at her husband's side. On some days during this last year, she has scanned the newspaper before him, deciding which stories he needed to see and which he could live without.
After 44 years of marriage, the two still hold hands a lot. Mrs. Middleton remembers the moment after he announced his resignation: “He took my hand and said, "We could hold all this bitterness in our hearts, but we can't do that. We've got to put it behind us and go on with our lives.'
“We just walked out (of the courthouse) and never looked back,” she says.
In the months to come, the attorney general's office would subpoena the couple's financial records, looking for evidence of a payoff. There was no such thing, Mrs. Middleton says. Her husband earned $48,500 a year as judge-executive. He had no other business on the side, like the leaders of other counties do. Now the couple's only income is retirement funds.
Mrs. Middleton has no complaints about Mr. Butler, although she notes that this year, for the first time, they didn't get a Christmas card from him. His family didn't get one from hers, either.
The Middletons have received two shopping bags full of letters from friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues. Their former dentist wrote. So did a U.S. senator, former state legislators, reporters,
homeless shelter directors, Chamber of Commerce officials, a clerk from Remke Markets.
One writer commented on Mr. Middleton's “recent act of heroism as a public official,” referring to his acknowledgment of his mistake.
Over the holidays, a woman approached Mrs. Middleton at McDonalds. The two of them didn't know each other, but the woman said the couple was in her prayers. Then she invited them to a Christmas open house, and they went.
Mrs. Middleton is still immersed in church-related activities, especially as they concern race relations. She grew up in Wisconsin and didn't see an African-American until she was a senior in high school. But in the early '60s, as a Kentucky representative of Church Women United, she went to a conference in Atlanta and met Coretta Scott King.
Over the last year, I have seen her at many community events: A Sunday celebration at a predominately African-American church in Covington, a Saturday conference on “Building Hospitable Communities” for people of all races.
No husband and wife could come out of such a year unscathed.
But I'm convinced the Middletons will come out of this one with other qualities. They will have dignity, for instance, and they will know that this community also can move on.
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or by e-mail at: ksamples@enquirer.com
Karen Samples is The Enquirer's Kentucky columnist. Her column appears on Sundays and Thursdays in The Kentucky Enquirer. She can be reached at 578-5584 or email
her at ksamples@enquirer.com
SAMPLES ARCHIVE
