A couple of weeks ago, I had dinner at the Yacht Club with Judge Sandra Taylor and her husband, Island News Publisher Winston Burrell. I'm not making this up. Actually, it was a nice evening. An amusing highlight came when Judge Taylor returned from the powder room and gave me a message from a woman who, Judge Taylor said, didn't want to be seen talking directly to me. It was all very cloak-and-daggerish.
The message: Key West Art & Historical Society (KWAHS) Director Kevin O'Brien had resigned. O'Brien is the guy who created a firestorm of protest last December when he abruptly fired KWAHS Assistant Director Joe Pais for insulting— in his regular column in Key West The Newspaper— one of the local soda pop barons who gives a lot of money to the Society. At least that's the reason O'Brien gave Pais at the time. We assume that the woman at the Yacht Club wanted to get us that message because we have been active in the crusade to get Pais' firing rescinded, to clear his name.
What made O'Brien's action so bizarre was that Pais, after 13 years with the Society, had already resigned to take a more prestigious position with the State Division of Historical Resources in Tallahassee. Within hours of O'Brien's fit-of-passion action, however, the "leadership" at the Society decided that it would just be too, too embarrassing to announce that the reason Pais had been fired was that he had insulted a soda pop baron. So they adopted a "no comment" position. And, to this day, you can't get a straight answer about why Pais was fired at the KWAHS after he had already resigned.
"It's none of your business," they told us and anybody else who asked— even those who supported the Society with money. They were saying, in essence, "Give us your money and shut up!" They even closed the annual meeting to members-only this year, apparently fearful that protesters might show up to disrupt the proceedings. Pais, a former City Commissioner, mayoral candidate and planning board chairman, was well known and popular in the community.
On the Monday following the receipt of the clandestine message at the Yacht Club, we set out to try to verify that O'Brien had indeed resigned— reasoning that, maybe, just maybe, with a new board and new management, Pais' wrongful firing would be righted and his good name would be cleared.
The first call we made was to the Society's PR man. We learned that he was on an extended vacation. Then we tried to call a couple of board members. They didn't call us back. Then, we just called the Society's main number and asked the person who answered the phone if O'Brien had resigned.
"I think so," we were told, "but he's still here." We were given another number to call where we were able to speak to O'Brien's voice mail. "Hey, Kevin," we said. "We understand you're outta here! How about a comment about why you fired Joe Pais?" For some reason, he never called us back.
Then we called the KWAHS receptionist back again and asked who the new director was. "I don't know," we were told.
Finally, we got to talk to Attorney Bob Feldman, the new KWAHS board president. Apparently, Feldman is the only person in the entire organization who is allowed to talk "on the record." He confirmed that O'Brien had, indeed, resigned and that Claudia Pennington was the new director and that press releases would soon be faxed out. But two weeks later, we still haven't received any press releases.
We know that Pennington is on the job because we've talked to her. But her appointment has yet to be officially announced. We have no idea who she is or where she came from. Maybe we don't need to know. The way people get fired over there, she may not be around for more than a few months. And the rationale may be that if they don't ever announce that she was named director, they won't have to make an announcement when she is "no longer with us." Anyway, welcome to Key West, Claudia!
We have learned that nobody, so far, has officially rescinded the Pais firing, which is disappointing. But we hear that a "settlement" package for Pais was approved by the new board that might include, in essence, the "whiting out" of O'Brien's action— sort of like you might white out a typo on a typed page. We hope so. Then, maybe the Key West Art & Historical Society can go back "on the record."