10:00 PM CST on Friday, January 20, 2006

By Nancy Holland / 11 News

Uncut interviews: Damon Williams | Eric Eden | Shelly Leith | Shelly Leith (Part II)

Maybe it’s fate that a man named Eric Eden would design an economical sprinkler system to keep the lawn green.

When Enron was at its zenith he had other things on the drawing board, like Enron’s ill-fated power plant in India.

Eric Eden has a word for the fall from the top of the glass tower to a home office: “Opportunity.”

“I never could have quit my job to attempt to bring a product like this to market,” said Eric Eden, Watering Made Easy.  “I didn’t know what was involved and never could have quit my good job that I loved. Given the opportunity. In other words getting fired.”

Shelly Leith expected to retire from Enron.  But after 20 years, at the age of 60, the woman with an MBA in finance was out on the street with 5,000 others.

“I sent out hundreds of resumes and I don’t think I ever had an interview,” said Shelly Leith, Kingwood Paws and Claws.

In the months that followed, her life went to the dogs.

At first she walked Ranger as a favor.  But with an investment in a pocketful of business cards she walked into a fulltime pet sitting business and life change.

“I have clients who work in corporate America and there’s no way I’d go back to corporate America now.  I mean it’s just, it’s awful,” Leith said.

Damon Williams still has business meetings.  It’s just that now instead of working in Andy Fastow’s group he’s chief of staff for newly elected City Councilmember Peter Brown.  What was at first a humbling realization that the big money was gone has, he said, evolved.

“Money is dramatically less important for me and for most of the people that I know from that period,” Williams said.  “At the end of the day feeling good about what you do is much, has a much greater role.”

He, like the others, remembers life before the fall with affection.

The former Enron employees said when the trial starts they do plan on keeping up with it on television and in the newspaper, but they don’t plan on being in the courtroom.

They already have reached their own conclusions.

“Part of being, part of moving on and doing good is sort of taking any ill will that I might have for anybody out of the equation,” Williams said.

“I don’t blame Ken Lay for what happened up there,” Eric Eden said.  “Ken Lay empowered people to succeed.”

“I didn’t know.  I wasn’t there.  I never heard about it,” Shelly Leith said.  “None of that.  That stuff doesn’t wash with me because I have a very little business, but if my pet sitters screw up the buck stops here.”

Starting this spring, Eric Eden’s sprinkler system will be sold nationwide in a major home improvement chain.

Shelly Leith now has eight people working for her at Kingwood Paws and Claws.

And Damon Williams is still working on grand plans, only this time they are for the city of Houston.

Interestingly, these people took the best part of Enron with them -- the part that made them believe they could succeed at anything.