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Colleagues and family members remembered the late Doug McKay, owner of Paradise Amusements, Post Falls, Idaho, as a tireless showman who spent hours on end keeping his equipment in top shape.
"He was a conscientious young man, hard working, just a nice guy," said Tom Atkins, co-owner of Austin, Texas-based Mighty Thomas Carnival Inc., where McKay and his brother, Wayne, booked games and rides for several years. "His dad [the late Robert McKay, who owned McKay Enterprises for more than four decades] liked tinkering, liked to fix things. We called him 'Scrap Iron' McKay because he could fix anything and Doug was quite a bit the same. He liked to tinker and work on things."
McKay was killed Aug. 16, after his hand and hair were caught in one of the cars on his Super Loop 2 roller coaster-type ride at the Island County Fair in Langley Wash., on Whidbey Island north of Seattle, said his sister, Eva McKay-Andrews. She said her 40-year-old brother, who was struck and dragged upward by the car before falling onto a fence set up around the ride, apparently was trying to lubricate a squeaky wheel when the accident occurred. His death comes roughly two years after his father succumbed to pancreatic cancer.
"Their...