Had Lake County thoroughly vetted the Au Clair/Carlton Palms proposal, it likely would not have been greenlighted. While the benefits of today's social media platforms did not exist in the 1980s, print journalism was thriving. As we previously opined, little was known about the students transferred to Carlton Palms in its opening weeks. However, it's founder did leave a paper trail, a newspaper trail, that attested to his motivations. . Undeniably, founder Mazik kept a low profile from 1981 to 1986. But, there were stories published in a smattering of news papers. Delaware's New Journal published the 1980 Au Clair licensing expose. The Philadelphia Daily News carried stories about the founder and his horse syndicate while Mazik made appearances in the social pages of the Sentinel. It could be argued that Lake County was negligent in failing to research the project and its principals and it succumbed to the propaganda.
In 1981, Jack Kiser of the Philadelphia Daily News, debunked Mazik's Silk Stalking's myth. The amazing little race horse who was featured at least three times on 60 Minutes, who not only lived alongside special needs children but had also saved their home from certain financial insecurity, was little more than contrived folklore. It was, Kiser opined, a lie.
Kiser didn't mince words when it came Mazik and his return to the harness racing syndicate:
This time, however, nobody is fighting to interview him, to put him on television, to break out the sob stories about the autistic children and the horses. The publicity releases don't even mention autistic children, or give him the title of doctor. A win by his pacer tonight could make a lot of people forget about a lot of bad problems. Mazik could be back on top, not to mention $875,000 richer for the win. -
Mazik's new pacer was Temujin, formerly known as Silky's Son. A ridgeling, it was predicted he would slide into harness racing obscurity. Nothing about this pacer showed promise. According to Kiser even Mazik's purchase appeared to be a muddled business dealing. Ken Mazik acquired Temujin at the 1980 Kentucky sale, but that purchase actually occurred under different name. Mazik proclaimed that he already had half ownership of Silky's Son. The assertion created a brew-ha-ha on the harness racing circuit. When everything had blown over, Mazik was Silky's Son's owner. He renamed the colt to Temujin, which conincidentally was Ghengas Kahn's birth name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan. Not surprisingly, the Yiddish word "Mazik" has a very special meaning of its own, "mischeivious little devil." http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english-lexicon/words/1653. Fascinating!
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