Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Fans of Roy show support

Thousands send goodwill notes to lift spirits of injured magician

Thousands of people have sent get-well wishes to magician Roy Horn since his injury Oct. 3. Some have sent flowers and balloons to his Las Vegas home, while others, like this woman, have stopped outside The Mirage to leave a message. Photo by John Locher.

Yes, said local magician Jason Bird, Siegfried & Roy can sometimes be a big slice of Vegas cheese, but that doesn't change the fact that they're genuinely nice guys who put on a spectacular show for decades.

And so Bird, a 24-year-old who left Wisconsin for Las Vegas when he was just 18 to pursue his dreams, is one of a throng of fans who have stopped by the duo's home in recent days to drop off a simple note of goodwill.

To him, the news of Roy Horn's near death a week and a half ago in the jaws of a tiger was the kind of stunning blow you expect to hear just once in a lifetime.

"It felt like 9-11," he said. "You just couldn't believe it. ... It's like it happened to someone in your family."

Indeed, several fans interviewed for this story said it sometimes feels as if they are grieving for a member of their own family.

"That's the way I feel about it, and I think there are a lot of other people who feel that way too," said Helen Hoverud, who said she has seen the Siegfried & Roy show at least 200 times.

Hoverud, 54, who lives alone in a small town in Minnesota, first saw the show about a decade ago, she said in a telephone interview Tuesday. Since then, she has seen the show so many times that she can tell which tiger is on stage on any particular night simply by its appearance.

Montecore -- the cat that bit down on Horn's neck during a show Oct. 3 -- was one of her favorites, she said.

"There are people who've seen the show four, five hundred times," she said. "I know people who've seen the show 1,000 times."

In the week and a half since Horn was injured, thousands of people have sent notes, flowers, e-mails and cards wishing the longtime performer well.

Still others have stopped by The Mirage on the Strip to scrawl get well messages on notepads outside the hotel.

Those in the know bypass the Strip and deposit get well messages directly at Horn's longtime home, just off Vegas Drive between Rancho Road and Decatur Boulevard.

There, messages from friends and strangers are plastered to the stucco wall, surrounded by flowers of every color, get-well cards, and notes from churches, Girl Scouts and school children from around the Las Vegas Valley.

No one can say how many people have sent their best wishes; the duo's spokesman, Dave Kirvin, said they're far too great to count.

"I don't know how you quantify something like that," he said. "I don't even think we know. There's just so much coming in from around the world."

Cheryl Persinger, a spokeswoman for University Medical Center, where Horn was still listed in critical condition Tuesday, said the hospital does not keep track of how much mail Horn has received.

So many flowers have come for Horn that Mirage personnel rotate the vases and pots outside the hotel each morning, taking away those that have become wilted and replacing them with fresh ones.

The outpouring of support -- particularly from locals -- shouldn't surprise anyone, said a national expert on celebrity worship.

"They're something like a sports team for Las Vegas," said James Houran, an Illinois psychologist who co-authored a recent study concluding that what he calls Celebrity Worship Syndrome can be physically unhealthy. "They are, in a way, an icon for Las Vegas. It's easy to see why people are coming together on this. It's almost like Las Vegas itself has been hurt."

He said some people could feel as if Horn is almost like a member of their family.

"Some people may feel that when Roy got hurt, they themselves felt pain," he said. "People may not show up for work because of the grief they feel about someone they never met."

Houran's study concluded that about one-third of the people studied showed what can almost be called an addiction to celebrities. They feel as if they have an uncanny personal connection to their favorite celebrity.

Another psychologist, Chris Heavey, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said people's devotion to celebrities can have a biological basis.

He explained that one of the basic rules of psychology is that people have a need to relate to other people. In today's world, where many people have become isolated from others, they fill that void through a connection with celebrities.

He, too, likened Siegfried & Roy in that sense to a sports franchise.

"When people get incredibly attached to something they have no personal connection to, that's an emotional level of attachment," Heavey said, drawing the sports team analogy. "It's irrational. It doesn't make any sense. I think the same thing is in play with celebrities."

He said such an attachment is not necessarily unhealthy.

"The fact that it's not rational doesn't mean it's trivial," he said. "We are emotional beings."

So much so that Patricia Stevens, a health teacher at Sawyer Middle School in Las Vegas, used Horn's injury to help clarify a lesson on sympathy and empathy for her class.

"The children were having a tough time understanding the difference," she said. The class penned notes to Horn, and had them placed at the home.

Stevens said the children were more than enthusiastic to take on the assignment.

"Oh, incredibly enthusiastic," she said. "As a matter of fact, I got cards from them after the deadline. I'm sure I'd still be getting them if I asked for them."

Another local school teacher, Maurya Ward, said her first-grade class at May Elementary School also took seriously the task of writing get well messages to Horn.

"It kind of touched home," she said, explaining that one little boy in the class has a parent who works for the duo. "We felt like we needed to do something."

Kathi Drennen, who has lived around the corner from Horn for about 15 years, said she, too, felt like she had to do something.

"They've always given of themselves," she said. "The community needs to give back."

Drennen was driving by the house Monday evening when she stopped to drop off a bouquet of flowers.

"As I drive by here, I see the flowers wilting," she said. "Well, I can't have that. I'll just keep bringing new ones until he gets better. And I know he will."