City Watch

Photo courtesy of BYUtv.

There are lies and there are damn lies. And then there is American history.

History is, after all, written by the winners. And from settlement to geo-economic dominance, our plucky countrymen have long managed to come out on the winning side of human events. That’s what makes American exceptionalism so alluring—the evidence of God’s favor seems to be everywhere.

Of course, there are all those pesky, less virtuous details to deal with. Slavery and Jim Crow. Carpet bombings and ethnic internment. Proxy wars and puppet governments. That’s where revisionism comes in handy. Sometimes, after all, it is simply easier to tell a story than deal with the truth.

Stan Ellsworth seems to understand this all too well.

The Utah actor and host of BYUtv’s hit history series, American Ride, is an unabashed advocate for American exceptionalism.

“I do believe this nation was founded by Providence,” said the 6-foot-2-inch, 300-pound blonde-bearded biker, a self-proclaimed “Southern boy” who said he grew up idolizing General Stonewall Jackson and other heroes of the Confederacy.

“A lot of people want to run down the great men of American history,” Ellsworth said. “They focus on the mistakes, and they’re all too willing to forget the noble sacrifices.”

But that, Ellsworth said, doesn’t excuse the failings. “People can be proud of this country and they should be proud of this country,” he said. “But they have to be honest, too.”

Indeed, on his show Ellsworth peppers his nationalism with a healthy dose of smack-you-in-the-face reality. And so, when it comes to a war that many fellow Southerners still blame on “Northern aggression,” Ellsworth won’t abide by Dixie revisionism.

Those who say the South seceded over “states rights,” he growled in one episode, have “either checked their morality or their common sense at the door.”

“They have two problems,” Ellsworth went on. “No. 1: Chattel bondage is wrong, there’s no way around it. No. 2: Under the Constitution, states don’t have rights. States have powers, shared powers with the federal government that the people have given them.”

This is what gives Ellsworth’s show—in which the history buff rides a Harley-Davidson Softtail Deluxe across the country as he recounts the battles, booms and busts of American antiquity—its peculiar charm. It’s the seeming honesty of the message. It’s the apparent sincerity of the messenger.

But that’s also why, today, Ellsworth has a problem. Because when it comes to his own history, he’s been significantly more prone to revisionism.

Next>>>Holes in the Story

Back>>>Read other stories from our August 2013 issue 

Ellsworth visits Cody, Wyo., named for American showman and bison hunter William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Photo courtesy of BYUtv.

When he was growing up in northern Virginia, Ellsworth said, he used to ride his bike up Henry House Hill, where Gen. Thomas Jackson reputedly earned his nickname.

Stonewall is still up there. Big and bronze and ripped like a superhero, imposingly seated astride his horse, and daring the Union Army to come knock him down—just like the stories say he was in the First Battle of Bull Run.

Turns out, though, there’s some dispute among historians as to where Jackson really got that nickname—and whether it was meant as a compliment or an insult. But like many stories of history that have been repeated so often, it’s gotten tough to tell truth from fiction.

And maybe that’s what Ellsworth thought would happen when he began telling stories about his past.

Bring together a biography strewn across news articles, marketing materials and interviews, and the tales told about Ellsworth are as herculean as that big old statue in Manassas.

Some of it is accurate. Lots of it is exaggerated. Much of it is fallacious.

A bio for a History Channel pilot in which Ellsworth once starred claims he served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps and “fought for his country in the Middle East.” The Marines say that’s absolutely not true.

A post on BYUtv’s Facebook page asserts Ellsworth earned a doctorate from the University of Utah. The U says that didn’t happen.

Ellsworth has claimed on numerous occasions he played linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions. Team officials say it’s possible he attended a training camp or served on a practice squad, but they can’t find any record of him.

Ellsworth has also indicated he was a defensive coordinator at the University of Arizona and University of Pennsylvania. That’s not true either. He appears to have had some short stints as an assistant coach at lower division schools including Arizona Western College and Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. He is also listed as a graduate coaching assistant at the University of Utah in the mid-1980s; one former U. athletic staffer said Ellsworth’s oft-made claim to have been a defensive coordinator there was akin to a graduate teaching assistant claiming to be a professor.

Ellsworth told Salt Lake magazine he earned a teaching credential from Westminster College and taught history at Highland High School before getting fed up with the public education system. Records from those institutions show Ellsworth enrolled but didn’t complete any classes at Westminster, and that he was fired for cause from Highland; the district declined to reveal why it terminated him.

Ellsworth also told the magazine his wife was murdered in front of their children while he was away pursuing his football career. That, unfortunately, is mostly true: Police and media reports from the fall of 1996 show Lisa Ellsworth was stabbed to death while her kids played in an adjacent room. She was not, however, married to Stan Ellsworth at the time—they’d been divorced for more than two years. The presumed killer, who subsequently took his own life, was Lisa Ellsworth’s common-law husband.

Stan Ellsworth has repeatedly spoken of American Ride as a concept he created and unsuccessfully pitched to various production companies for eight years before BYUtv grabbed hold in 2010.

Filmmaker Peter Starr said that’s absolutely not true. Starr first met Ellsworth when the Utah-based actor—whose resume was then limited to a role as a basketball coach in the Disney movie The Luck of the Irish and as an extra in one episode of a USA Network show called Cover Me—auditioned for a role on a TV pilot called History Hogs. The History Channel, which had optioned the pilot, declined to greenlight the series, so Starr worked with Ellsworth to create a similarly themed show, which they called “American Ride.”

Starr, who was battling an illness at the time, said Ellsworth agreed to pitch the show to potential producers, but repeatedly told him that the program had failed to be picked up.

“One day he just stopped calling,” said Starr, who didn’t learn that Ellsworth had gone on to sell the show to BYUtv until he was contacted by Salt Lakemagazine. “It would appear that I was just cut out altogether.”

Starr said he would be discussing the matter further with an attorney.

The terms of Ellsworth’s contract with BYUtv are private, but records from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development show that Utah taxpayers have subsidized American Ride to the tune of $200,000. BYUtv managing director Derek Marquis declined to address any of Ellsworth’s apparent lies, instead referring calls to an East Coast public relations firm.

Confronted with a list of apparent fabrications, Ellsworth said he may have “combined some parts of my history for simplicity.”

Without accepting responsibility for any specific lie, Ellsworth acknowledged that “I should have been much more proactive in protecting the validity of who I am.”

But the grizzly voiced actor flatly denied any involvement in the story of his service in the Marines. He said he had “no idea where anyone would have gotten that from.”

Starr, though, said that’s just one more lie. “He talked about being in the military all the time,” he said. “And the sad thing of all of this is that I don’t think anyone would have cared. In the case of our show, he read for the part and he was dead-on right for it—that’s all we cared about. None of that other stuff mattered.”

Out of the Past

Ellsworth with a film crew at Refugio State Beach in California. Photo courtesy of BYUtv.

Ellsworth is an unquestionably captivating storyteller. And while the claims he has made about his personal history are interesting, it’s his personality that has driven the Emmy-winning show’s success. So why the exaggerations?

“It’s a good question,” Ellsworth said. “I’ve never sat back and evaluated it. I guess this is one of those Dr. Phil moments.”

It’s not clear when all the stories began, though many seem to be revisions of painful personal failures. Three divorces. A futile effort to play in the NFL. An aborted try for a graduate degree. A fruitless attempt to break more deeply into the NCAA coaching ranks. A messy termination from a job teaching history.

“To some degree, I think I haven’t wanted a whole lot of people to really know me,” Ellsworth said. “I suppose I’ve thought that a little bit of distance, however it is achieved, might be more comfortable.”

He stressed the community work he’s done since he began hosting American Ride.

“You know, I’ve been volunteering with the Boy Scouts, I try to visit schools, and I’m really trying to set a good example for people,” he said. “I’m getting better. I’m definitely not perfect. But if I live another 10 years, I think I’ll be all-pro.”

Not everyone thinks Ellsworth is so redeemable, though.

Utah real estate agent Amir Haskic said Ellsworth’s purported football experience was key when he invested $30,000 in a 2009 documentary on the University of Utah’s undefeated season and Sugar Bowl victory. The project was shepherded by Utah video producer Lance Huber, who had earlier worked with Ellsworth on a series of Comcast commercials.

“I honestly didn’t know very much about football, but I thought, here is a guy with all the credentials, a guy who played in the NFL,” Haskic said.

Huber’s wife, Leanna Huber, said her husband also figured Ellsworth’s purported football career would make him perfect to fundraise for the film. When Ellsworth reported back that he’d gotten money from multiple investors, it seemed Huber’s hunch was right.

But when it came time for Ellsworth to transfer the money, Leanna Huber said, the checks bounced. Lance Huber emptied savings and retirement accounts to pay the salaries of his documentary crew.

“Lance was very trusting,” Leanna Huber said. “He always thought Stan was a friend, and it was very painful for him to learn that wasn’t true.”

Huber killed himself on the evening of Sept. 2, 2009. Leanna Huber said Ellsworth’s betrayal wasn’t the only thing haunting her husband, “but it was one more thing, one more terrible thing, that he was carrying.”

To that point, police records show, investigators had considered Huber a key victim and witness in a developing fraud case against Ellsworth. After the suicide investigators removed Huber from the list of victims, having reluctantly concluded they’d lost their main witness to a key part of the case.

Still, on the basis of an apparent theft from two other investors who had kept good records of their dealings with Ellsworth, Salt Lake County prosecutors were able to charge Ellsworth with felony securities fraud.

In 2010 Ellsworth pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and, with as much as a year in jail hanging over him, agreed to pay back the victims in the case at a rate of $800 a month.

“And then nothing happened,” Haskic said.

The court later issued a garnishment order to Disney in hopes of recovering any residuals Ellsworth might receive for his work his work on The Luck of the Irish and High School Musical 3, in which Ellsworth had a small role in 2008.

Haskic said he’d pretty much given up on getting his money back. “I don’t really know why he’s not in jail,” he said.

Indeed, court records show that a warrant was issued for Ellsworth’s arrest after he failed to pay the ordered restitution—and the warrant remained active during much of the time Ellsworth was traveling across the country to film American Ride.

After a three-year delinquency, Ellsworth’s attorney, Fred Metos, finally paid the restitution, court records show. The payment came just weeks after Salt Lake magazine began its investigation into Ellsworth’s past.

With that, the warrant was rescinded and the guilty plea, which had been held in abeyance as is typical in fraud cases in which prosecutors are seeking to recover as much money as possible for victims, was dismissed.

Plans are now reportedly in order to take American Ride overseas for visits to World War I and II battlegrounds where tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in the field of battle.

“So pretty much, he’s gotten away with it,” Leanna Huber said. “He never suffered. And in the eyes of so many people, he’s a big hero. But actually, he’s just a big fraud.”

Matthew D. LaPlante is an assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University. He loves history, rides a Harley Davidson Iron 883 and remains a fan of American Ride.

Back>>>Part 1 of Historical Fiction

Back>>>Read other stories in our August 2013 issue

Ellsworth visits Cody, Wyo., named for American showman and bison hunter William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Photo courtesy of BYUtv.

When he was growing up in northern Virginia, Ellsworth said, he used to ride his bike up Henry House Hill, where Gen. Thomas Jackson reputedly earned his nickname.

Stonewall is still up there. Big and bronze and ripped like a superhero, imposingly seated astride his horse, and daring the Union Army to come knock him down—just like the stories say he was in the First Battle of Bull Run.

Turns out, though, there’s some dispute among historians as to where Jackson really got that nickname—and whether it was meant as a compliment or an insult. But like many stories of history that have been repeated so often, it’s gotten tough to tell truth from fiction.

And maybe that’s what Ellsworth thought would happen when he began telling stories about his past.

Bring together a biography strewn across news articles, marketing materials and interviews, and the tales told about Ellsworth are as herculean as that big old statue in Manassas.

Some of it is accurate. Lots of it is exaggerated. Much of it is fallacious.

A bio for a History Channel pilot in which Ellsworth once starred claims he served eight years in the U.S. Marine Corps and “fought for his country in the Middle East.” The Marines say that’s absolutely not true.

A post on BYUtv’s Facebook page asserts Ellsworth earned a doctorate from the University of Utah. The U says that didn’t happen.

Ellsworth has claimed on numerous occasions he played linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks and Detroit Lions. Team officials say it’s possible he attended a training camp or served on a practice squad, but they can’t find any record of him.

Ellsworth has also indicated he was a defensive coordinator at the University of Arizona and University of Pennsylvania. That’s not true either. He appears to have had some short stints as an assistant coach at lower division schools including Arizona Western College and Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. He is also listed as a graduate coaching assistant at the University of Utah in the mid-1980s; one former U. athletic staffer said Ellsworth’s oft-made claim to have been a defensive coordinator there was akin to a graduate teaching assistant claiming to be a professor.

Ellsworth told Salt Lake magazine he earned a teaching credential from Westminster College and taught history at Highland High School before getting fed up with the public education system. Records from those institutions show Ellsworth enrolled but didn’t complete any classes at Westminster, and that he was fired for cause from Highland; the district declined to reveal why it terminated him.

Ellsworth also told the magazine his wife was murdered in front of their children while he was away pursuing his football career. That, unfortunately, is mostly true: Police and media reports from the fall of 1996 show Lisa Ellsworth was stabbed to death while her kids played in an adjacent room. She was not, however, married to Stan Ellsworth at the time—they’d been divorced for more than two years. The presumed killer, who subsequently took his own life, was Lisa Ellsworth’s common-law husband.

Stan Ellsworth has repeatedly spoken of American Ride as a concept he created and unsuccessfully pitched to various production companies for eight years before BYUtv grabbed hold in 2010.

Filmmaker Peter Starr said that’s absolutely not true. Starr first met Ellsworth when the Utah-based actor—whose resume was then limited to a role as a basketball coach in the Disney movie The Luck of the Irish and as an extra in one episode of a USA Network show called Cover Me—auditioned for a role on a TV pilot called History Hogs. The History Channel, which had optioned the pilot, declined to greenlight the series, so Starr worked with Ellsworth to create a similarly themed show, which they called “American Ride.”

Starr, who was battling an illness at the time, said Ellsworth agreed to pitch the show to potential producers, but repeatedly told him that the program had failed to be picked up.

“One day he just stopped calling,” said Starr, who didn’t learn that Ellsworth had gone on to sell the show to BYUtv until he was contacted by Salt Lakemagazine. “It would appear that I was just cut out altogether.”

Starr said he would be discussing the matter further with an attorney.

The terms of Ellsworth’s contract with BYUtv are private, but records from the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development show that Utah taxpayers have subsidized American Ride to the tune of $200,000. BYUtv managing director Derek Marquis declined to address any of Ellsworth’s apparent lies, instead referring calls to an East Coast public relations firm.

Confronted with a list of apparent fabrications, Ellsworth said he may have “combined some parts of my history for simplicity.”

Without accepting responsibility for any specific lie, Ellsworth acknowledged that “I should have been much more proactive in protecting the validity of who I am.”

But the grizzly voiced actor flatly denied any involvement in the story of his service in the Marines. He said he had “no idea where anyone would have gotten that from.”

Starr, though, said that’s just one more lie. “He talked about being in the military all the time,” he said. “And the sad thing of all of this is that I don’t think anyone would have cared. In the case of our show, he read for the part and he was dead-on right for it—that’s all we cared about. None of that other stuff mattered.”

Out of the Past

Ellsworth with a film crew at Refugio State Beach in California. Photo courtesy of BYUtv.

Ellsworth is an unquestionably captivating storyteller. And while the claims he has made about his personal history are interesting, it’s his personality that has driven the Emmy-winning show’s success. So why the exaggerations?

“It’s a good question,” Ellsworth said. “I’ve never sat back and evaluated it. I guess this is one of those Dr. Phil moments.”

It’s not clear when all the stories began, though many seem to be revisions of painful personal failures. Three divorces. A futile effort to play in the NFL. An aborted try for a graduate degree. A fruitless attempt to break more deeply into the NCAA coaching ranks. A messy termination from a job teaching history.

“To some degree, I think I haven’t wanted a whole lot of people to really know me,” Ellsworth said. “I suppose I’ve thought that a little bit of distance, however it is achieved, might be more comfortable.”

He stressed the community work he’s done since he began hosting American Ride.

“You know, I’ve been volunteering with the Boy Scouts, I try to visit schools, and I’m really trying to set a good example for people,” he said. “I’m getting better. I’m definitely not perfect. But if I live another 10 years, I think I’ll be all-pro.”

Not everyone thinks Ellsworth is so redeemable, though.

Utah real estate agent Amir Haskic said Ellsworth’s purported football experience was key when he invested $30,000 in a 2009 documentary on the University of Utah’s undefeated season and Sugar Bowl victory. The project was shepherded by Utah video producer Lance Huber, who had earlier worked with Ellsworth on a series of Comcast commercials.

“I honestly didn’t know very much about football, but I thought, here is a guy with all the credentials, a guy who played in the NFL,” Haskic said.

Huber’s wife, Leanna Huber, said her husband also figured Ellsworth’s purported football career would make him perfect to fundraise for the film. When Ellsworth reported back that he’d gotten money from multiple investors, it seemed Huber’s hunch was right.

But when it came time for Ellsworth to transfer the money, Leanna Huber said, the checks bounced. Lance Huber emptied savings and retirement accounts to pay the salaries of his documentary crew.

“Lance was very trusting,” Leanna Huber said. “He always thought Stan was a friend, and it was very painful for him to learn that wasn’t true.”

Huber killed himself on the evening of Sept. 2, 2009. Leanna Huber said Ellsworth’s betrayal wasn’t the only thing haunting her husband, “but it was one more thing, one more terrible thing, that he was carrying.”

To that point, police records show, investigators had considered Huber a key victim and witness in a developing fraud case against Ellsworth. After the suicide investigators removed Huber from the list of victims, having reluctantly concluded they’d lost their main witness to a key part of the case.

Still, on the basis of an apparent theft from two other investors who had kept good records of their dealings with Ellsworth, Salt Lake County prosecutors were able to charge Ellsworth with felony securities fraud.

In 2010 Ellsworth pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and, with as much as a year in jail hanging over him, agreed to pay back the victims in the case at a rate of $800 a month.

“And then nothing happened,” Haskic said.

The court later issued a garnishment order to Disney in hopes of recovering any residuals Ellsworth might receive for his work his work on The Luck of the Irish and High School Musical 3, in which Ellsworth had a small role in 2008.

Haskic said he’d pretty much given up on getting his money back. “I don’t really know why he’s not in jail,” he said.

Indeed, court records show that a warrant was issued for Ellsworth’s arrest after he failed to pay the ordered restitution—and the warrant remained active during much of the time Ellsworth was traveling across the country to film American Ride.

After a three-year delinquency, Ellsworth’s attorney, Fred Metos, finally paid the restitution, court records show. The payment came just weeks after Salt Lake magazine began its investigation into Ellsworth’s past.

With that, the warrant was rescinded and the guilty plea, which had been held in abeyance as is typical in fraud cases in which prosecutors are seeking to recover as much money as possible for victims, was dismissed.

Plans are now reportedly in order to take American Ride overseas for visits to World War I and II battlegrounds where tens of thousands of American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines were killed in the field of battle.

“So pretty much, he’s gotten away with it,” Leanna Huber said. “He never suffered. And in the eyes of so many people, he’s a big hero. But actually, he’s just a big fraud.”

Matthew D. LaPlante is an assistant professor of journalism at Utah State University. He loves history, rides a Harley Davidson Iron 883 and remains a fan of American Ride.

Back>>>Part 1 of Historical Fiction

Back>>>Read other stories in our August 2013 issue

Dr. York Yates

A state rich in plastic surgeons

It surprises many people, but studies have found that conservative, sober Utah shows the nation’s highest interest in breast implants, according to a plastic surgery marketing site realself.com. Forbes magazine, in 2007, went so far as to call Salt Lake City the “vainest” city in America because of its disproportionately high number of plastic surgeons for its population. Salt Lake has six plastic surgeons for every 100,000 residents, as compared to New York City’s four. Statewide, a 2010 survey found that the Beehive State as a whole came in at No. 8 for board-certified plastic surgeons, joining New York, California and Florida in the top 10. And during the recession, Utah’s plastic surgeons continued to prosper. (Hard numbers for Utah are difficult to break out because the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery lumps the state’s statistics under an eight-state region, which also includes California, Colorado and Arizona.)

York Yates, a Layton plastic surgeon, says any surprises about Utahns’ enthusiastic embrace of cosmetic surgery or the state’s surfeit of highly-trained plastic surgeons says more about stereotypes of the heavily Mormon-influenced culture than reality. “People from the outside look at our conservative culture and think plastic surgery should be taboo here,” Yates says. “In fact, plastic surgery is more popular here than in many other parts of the country.”

An openness to cosmetic work

Yates and his colleagues see something more subtle at work in Utah’s cosmetic surgery statistics. Because of Utah’s large Mormon population and generally conservative culture, women tend to get married young, have more babies early and in more rapid succession than women elsewhere.

“And they are done having their kids earlier,” says Yates, whose practice is mostly Mormon patients. “So you have the recipe of a young mother who is done having kids. You have a fairly affluent population. And then you add to that an openness about discussing plastic surgery.”

Utah women, especially Mormons, Yates says, tend to share their lives, including plastic surgery, with family and members in their local wards. He’s not sure exactly why they’re so frank. “My patients are really open and honest with their family and friends about the things they have done. They share and compare. It’s openly talked about.”

“You do a good service for one or two women within a ward, and pretty soon you see four or five more from that same ward or neighborhood,” Yates says. “Clearly, they are open and talking about it.”

‘Restoration’ not vanity

Stereotypes about the goals of cosmetic surgery itself also crumble in Utah. It’s not about sexy breasts or perfection through elaborate facial work. “The patients I see aren’t interested in being ‘done’ looking or tasteless,” says Yates. “They see the surgery as restorative. It’s young mothers who want their bodies back.”

Renato Saltz, a Salt Lake plastic surgeon, observes that, based on his practice, Utah’s conservative population nevertheless cares deeply about physical appearance. “Utah has some of the most beautiful people in the world, and they like to remain beautiful as they grow older.”

Saltz, who taught medicine at the University of Utah before going into private practice, says that while the number of Utah men interested in cosmetic work is lower than the national average, young mothers are much more open to it than average because of their relative youth and the support of friends and family. “Pregnancy really damages parts of the body, including stretch marks,” he says. “It is a direct result of repeated pregnancies —the tissues don’t get a chance to recover.”

Not surprisingly, plastic surgeons in Utah tend to be as conservative about their work as their patients. “I don’t like any ‘adventures.’ We screen our patients very well,” says Saltz. “My patients are in their 30s and 40s—it’s a mature population. They have real expectations. We don’t get many who say, ‘I want to look like Jennifer Lopez or Angelina Jolie.’ We take it seriously when they are looking for the wrong [self-image] solutions. Sometimes you just have to say no.”

Yates agrees. “I’m not a flamboyant type of guy. I’m here for a reason. I like normal.”

Another advantage of Utah’s young mommies is that they tend to be healthy and fit, allowing them to get their mommy makeover in one shot. “The patients are healthy,” Saltz says.” Good candidates for combined procedures.”

Next>>>A second spring

Back>>>Utah’s Mommy Makeover intro

A figurine of a goose, her gosling and some golden eggs sits on the small conference table in Michael T. Young’s Salt Lake City office. It’s there as a reminder to Young, CEO of the Young Electric Sign Co., and his brothers of the Aesop fable The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs.

“We never want to forget what our father and his father before him taught us—that you take nothing for granted, that business is to be respected, that we are stewards rather than owners,” says Young, who with his brothers make up YESCO’s third-generation leadership team. “We’ve been blessed with a great legacy, and we all appreciate the lesson in that fable—that those who are greedy end up with nothing.”

Stewardship is a word the family uses often in describing the leadership principle that has driven the 92-year-old company. Michael Young says the concept of stewardship was instilled in them from day one by their grandfather, company founder Thomas Young Sr., and their father, Thomas Young Jr. Young and brothers Jeffrey S. Young (SVP and chief marketing officer) and Paul C. Young (EVP) oversee operations with 1,500 employees, 43 offices in 11 states and four manufacturing plants.