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Monday, September 26, 1994
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Attention: Seniors Applications are now available for this year's H.O.P.E. Award
Applications available in the OAC office in the Kansas Union HONOR FOR OUTSTANDING PROGRESSIVE EDUCATOR
Board of Class Officers
Sunday $1.00 off Burgers .75 Draws
Every Chiefs Game "All You Can Eat" Taco Bar.
Monday
$.15 Wing Night
$1.50 Domestic Bottle
Tuesday "All you Can Eat" Taco and Burrito Bar
Wednesday
Mini Burger Night
1/2 dozen $3.95
$3.75 Pitchers
Come Play NTN Trivia!
GIANT BACKPACK SALE
20% off EASTPAK products Today thru Tuesday.
You can bring an Eastpak bag places you shouldn't go. Because unlike you, it comes with a lifetime guarantee. Waterproof Cordura $ ^{ \textcircled{2}} $ Nylon. And it's also available in a variety of colors and styles. Eastpak. Buy it.
KU Bookstores Kansas and Burge Unions The only store offering rebates to KU students Items already on sale excluded.
VIC: Incurable extrovert still partying
He worked a few nights at the new bar, but his rambunctiousness offended some female patrons.
Continued from Page 1A.
Kerry Johnson, co-owner of the new Hideaway, was expecting that. She dated Wortman in the late 1970s.
"I think I scared them off," he said.
"He was just as nutty then as he is now," she said. "Some of the women were really upset."
Wortman would agree.
"I adore women," he said. "I treat them like they want to be treated. When I say something to someone, it's to make them smile or feel good."
So Wortman had to go. He now paints houses and does other odd jobs.
Johnson said she understood her customers' complaints but said Wortman's behavior didn't bother her.
"I really don't get offended by him much because he's doing it so innocently," she said.
"He's more famous than infamous now, and that pleases me," she said.
But he doesn't take kindly to being corrected, he said.
Wortman's sister, Gretchen, said Wortman had made progress in shedding his reckless image.
However, the consensus among most people is that Wortman is nothing to fear.
"I'll give them a tongue-lashing like they've never had," he said.
"He showed up at one of my parties with a five-gallon jug of wine and proceeded to drink the whole thing," she said. "He was hitting on all the girls and wouldn't leave. Then he passed out on my porch. He woke up the next morning, offered to cook me breakfast and left."
Jacki Becker, a bartender at The Bottleneck, 737 New Hampshire St., remembered the day that Wortman crashed her party on Ohio Street.
But that was the old Vic." Becker said. "The new Vic" is sober.
"Ihavent had a drink in a longtime" Wortman said, "I drank O'Doul's."
Wortman now goes to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and has a cardboard "no alcohol" sign posted on the
front door of his apartment in the basement of a house on Indiana Street, which he calls "The Dungeon."
"I stopped drinking because I wasn't accomplishing anything," he said.
Friends appreciated the change.
"Since he's cleaned up, he's a very good person." Becker said.
"I wasn't a very peaceful hippie," he said. "I had long hair and combat boots. I left the sandals for the guys who didn't have to fight their way to and from school."
"I'mpartying every day.Ilike positivity."
Wortman was born in 1958 in Omaha, Neb. He went to high school in a rough area of Chicago, where his fighting spirit kept him from achieving full hippie-hood, he said.
Victor "The Barbarian" Wortman
Lawrenceresident
He was first christened "Vic the Barbarian" while serving a three-year stint in the Army in the late 1970s.
One day, as his unit was detonating explosives in a warfare training exercise in Alaska, Wortman was late getting out of ditch lined with explosives. When the explosives went off, they sent up a bright red shower of light that illuminated him from behind.
Wortman has lived in Lawrence since 1975, when, as he put it,
"Lawrence was first visited upon my aura."
One night about four years ago at the Bottleneck, the local band Zoom was playing its version of the Journey song "Any Way You Want It."
The moniker stuck and has distinguished him ever since.
Army buddies were mesmerized "Hey, you looked just like a barbarian," one of them said.
Many times during his 19 years in Lawrence, he has had trouble keeping his aura in check.
Wortman, a fan of '70s music, couldn't resist jumping onstage to sing along. Toward the end of the
song, a part of the stage collapsed, sending Wortman into a pile of debris.
Wortman wasn't hurt that time, but his life in Lawrence hasn't been without injury.
On Feb. 7, 1989, Wortman's right leg was crushed when he was hit by a car as he stepped out onto Indiana Street. He was flown to the University of Kansas Medical Center for surgery.
He still suffers from a wobbly ankle and knee and has been on Social Security ever since.
Wortman was drunk at the time of the accident. The accident was one of the reasons he decided to quit drinking, he said.
Wortman did not want to talk about his wife, except to say that one morning he woke up and discovered that she had taken the children and left Lawrence.
Wortman has four daughters, ranging in ages from 7 to 11. All four are half Native American and live on an Indian reservation in Northern California.
Twice a year he hitchhikes out to the reservation to visit them. Between visits he talks to them every week by telephone.
"You couldn't have inherited that from me," he says.
"How's my baby?" he asks one daughter during a weekly call. His voice softens as he talks to them.
Another daughter gets on the phone and tells him she got straight As.
Wortman said he draws strength from his daughters, just as he draws strength from everyone he meets.
"I like to get out and about and enjoy people," he said. "I have a love for life."
Wortman acknowledged that his joie de vie, or love of life, had raised a few eyebrows.
"I'm partying every day," he said. "I like positivity."
"Some people think I'm strange," he said.
These days, Wortman spends much of his time at the Bottleneck or The Tap Room, 801 New Hampshire St., — drinking O'Doul's or Coke, of course.
But luckily for him, most Lawrence residents are happy to have a resident barbarian.
Half-Price for KU and Haskell students.
Tickets on sale at the Lied Center Box Office (864-ARTS); Murphy Hall Box Office (864-3982); and any Ticketmaster outlet (816) 931-3330 or (913) 234-4545; all seats reserved; public $30 and $25, KU, Haskell and K-12 students $15 and $12.50, senior citizens and other students $29 and $24; KU student tickets available through the SUA office, Kansas Union; phone orders can be made using VISA or MasterCard.
Special thanks to this year's Very Important Partners: Kief's Audio and Video, Laird Noller Dealerships, Payless ShoeSource and W.T. Kemper Foundation, Commerce Bank Trustee.
IT'S ALL HAPPENING AT THE LIED CENTER!