Walter Logan endured a lifetime of jabs in one night, but still got in a few zings himself.

Logan was in the verbal crosshairs at the Champ Clark Honey Shuck Restoration Inc. Annual Roast Nov. 1. More than 80 people attended the fund-raiser at the Keely Center in Louisiana. Proceeds from ticket sales and a silent auction will be used for upkeep of the historic Bowling Green home,

Master of Ceremonies Milan Berry presided over a pre-dinner skit featuring Julie Leverenz, Ted and Rebecca Glenn, and Mary Twellman. The players poked fun at the former Stark Brothers Nurseries executive’s days as a taste tester for Miller Brewing Co., his obsession with immaculate lawn care and an admonition his wife, Cindy, got from sorority sister Kathy Dabrowski – “You’re gonna end up in Louisiana, Missouri, picking apples.” The comment came after the couple’s blind date.

The first roaster was Mark Haddock. As Logan’s best friend since middle school, Haddock knows all about his buddy’s slow, meticulous way of speaking.

“I was going to do my entire presentation the way Walter talks, but decided not to put you through that,” he said.

Haddock recalled the only fight he ever got into was with Walter. And, of course, it was about the opposite sex.

“I didn’t get the girl, Walter didn’t get the girl,” he remembered. “Turns out, she didn’t like either of us.”

It’s not uncommon to see road kill along rural highways, but Logan did not hit a deer, rabbit, squirrel or skunk while driving his mother’s Buick on a vacation through the hills and hollers of North Carolina.

“He ran over a mule,” Haddock said to ebullient laughter. “Unfortunately, the mule and Mary Alice’s car didn’t make it.”

Pennye Brown Lentes recalled the Logan family’s mischievous side. The orientation came during her first day working at Stark Brothers. It also happened to be the birthday of Logan’s father, John.

He tricked Lentes into believing that her dad, Clarence “Socko” Brown, had stolen flowers from graves at Louisiana’s Riverview Cemetery to present as a gift.

“I’m sure my face was tomato red,” Lentes noted.

Zella Eliason recalled another birthday – Logan’s 40th. Borrowing from her father’s library of practical jokes, Lentes arranged with funeral director Al Smith to bring Logan to work in a hearse. The over-the-hill executive asked how he was supposed to get home.

“Al said ‘I don’t know – this is usually a one-way trip,’” Eliason relayed.

Perhaps the biggest laughs came when Logan’s youngest son, Blake, took the microphone. He admitted the roast came naturally because he’d been skewering his father “since the last century.”

Blake told the chuckling crowd that his dork of a father is “a real-life Ned Flanders” from “The Simpsons” television show; “eats “more butter than any human on earth;” thinks peanut butter, bananas and mayonnaise belong together on a sandwich; and has “the longest toes on the planet.”

The fact that Logan wears earphones while mowing could be “another way to tune my mother out” and his fascination with the weather is such that “we should call him ‘Rain Man,’” Blake added.

A life-sized cutout of actor Chevy Chase portraying Clark Griswold from the “Vacation” movies adorned the stage, and Blake said his father would have been perfect for the role.

Griswold “always had good intentions, but was kind of a goofball – in a good way,” he said.

As is custom, the roastee got the last word, saying he wanted to “clarify a few points.”

A high school football official for more than 40 years, Logan threw a yellow flag at Blake for “targeting” – a type of foul that during a game would have led to an ejection. Of course, there was that mule. He didn’t run it over, just struck it.

“I knew I’d hit something substantial, but I didn’t know what it was at first,” Logan said. “There were two mules. The good news is, I only hit one.”

Meanwhile, Lentes should have known the flower stealing saga was a ruse because Socko Brown was one of the biggest pranksters in Louisiana, Logan said.

In addition to Cindy and Blake, Logan was joined by his son, Ben Logan; daughter, Bethany Logan Pope; and other family members. He survived largely unscathed.

“I don’t feel there were that many skeletons in my closet.”

 

CUTLINE FOR PHOTO:

Walter Logan was the guest of honor at the Champ Clark Honey Shuck Restoration Inc. Annual Roast fund-raiser Nov. 1 at the Keely Center in Louisiana. Pictured, from left, are his grandson, Jack; wife, Cindy; son, Ben; daughter, Bethany Logan Pope; Logan; daughter-in-law, Sam; and son, Blake.