Indianapolis, IN
‘God has a sense of humor:’ Allison Melangton’s first grandbaby’s due on Indy 500 race day
INDIANAPOLIS — Allison Melangton knew immediately something was awry. There she was standing in the kitchen learning she’d be a grandmother for the first time, staring at her only son Cameron and his wife Taylor as they revealed the joyful news.
But something didn’t seem so joyful. Taylor was saying the words, “We’re pregnant,” but she and Cameron weren’t effusive or giddy. They seemed cautious.
“Is everything OK with the baby?” Melangton asked. “What? What is going on?”
Taylor finally spit it out. “We’re due on race day.”
Race day. As in May 26, 2024, the day of the Indianapolis 500. To any other family, even diehard race fans, a first grandbaby due on that date could be taken in stride.
But for Melangton, senior vice president of Penske Entertainment, which owns IndyCar and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, race day is the only square on the calendar circled in bold red. The only day she cannot be anywhere other than IMS.
“Well, God has a sense of humor,” Melangton said. “Really any other day than race day, which is 364 days of the year, any other day works. It’s the one day. That one day.”
And so today, 100 days out from the greatest spectacle in racing, Melangton is hoping her first grandbaby does what most babies do and does not arrive on its due date. But if it does? Well, Melangton has been thinking about that a lot.
“I need to be here race day for sure to get everything going,” she said. “If it’s in the middle of the race, I can leave. If it’s right after the race, I’ll have to get a helicopter.” Traffic would be horrific.
The wheels are spinning inside Melangton’s head as she stood overlooking the track inside the pagoda last week, considering the drive from West 16th Street to Ascension St. Vincent hospital in Carmel.
“It’s going to work out,” Melangton finally says. “That’s how I feel about it. It’s going to work out.”
The rumor about no pants? It’s true
To understand just why her grandchild’s due date is such a big deal for Melangton, people have to understand how seriously she takes her job at Penske and any other job she has held — from being the president of Indiana Sports Corp. to president of Indy’s Super Bowl Host Committee to associate producer for gymnastics with NBC Sports to working at just about every major sporting event that has ever made its way to the city.
Which brings us to the prime example of just how seriously Melangton takes her job. It was 1996 and the Olympic swimming trials were being held at the IUPUI Natatorium. Cameron was three years old and Melangton was senior vice president of Indiana Sports Corp.
“I was working more than full time. I’d been traveling a ton and those swimmers are nuts, right?” Melangton said. “They start warming up at 5 a.m. and they cool down after races until midnight.”
It was the ninth day of the 10-day event and Melangton said she had gotten three hours of sleep for nine nights straight. She left the natatorium, got home at 2 a.m., threw her shorts and event polo in the washer and went to bed ready for the final 10th day.
She woke up at the crack of dawn, less than three hours later, and threw her clothes into the dryer. She had two athletes she was picking up at a hotel to take to a television station for an interview at 5:45 a.m. Melangton took a shower, then started doing her hair and makeup.
When she went to get her clothes out of the dryer, the waistband on her shorts was still wet, so she put on the polo, finished her hair and makeup, put on her shoes, put on her fanny pack and left the house.
Melangton drove all the way to the hotel downtown and walked inside the lobby of the Marriott. She didn’t notice any particular cool breeze. it was hot. It was July. And she had on cotton briefs.
“When I walked in, the bellman came walking very briskly over to me and said, ‘Ma’am, are you OK?’” Melangton said. “I thought to myself, ‘Yeah, I look bad. I’m a little tired, but I’m good.’ And he said, ‘Are you sure?’”
Melangton will never forget what happened next. That bellman’s eyes started at her forehead and slowly made their way down her body and stopped at her waist.
“And I followed his eyes and looked down,” she said, “and I was standing in the lobby in my underwear.”
Melangton rushed out of the hotel and promptly drove home, calling on backup to get her athletes to the station.
“I travel with pants in my car now and I always tell her to have extra pants,” Melangton said, pointing to Taylor.
Race day and the days leading up to the Indy 500, after all, are one of Taylor’s busiest times of the year, too.
A sudden interest in the 500 Festival Princess program
Taylor is the events and communications manager at Visit Indy, a nonprofit that serves as the official sales and marketing arm for Indianapolis and the Indiana Convention Center. She spends race day and the days leading up to the event with clients.
She hosts them, wines and dines them and showcases the city to them in hopes they will bring their event here, too.
It’s a dream job for Taylor, who grew up on the south side of Indy and went to Roncalli. She was an avid race fan long before she met the Melangtons because her mother, Kim Wong, is an even bigger race fan.
Wong spends all her PTO days at the track and from the time Taylor was tiny, she has been sitting with her mom inside the magical raceway of IMS.
One year, when she was just a little girl, Taylor went to the 500 Festival parade and saw the princesses. “I’m going to be a princess one day,” she said to Kim. While she was in college at Ball State that dream came true and who was assigned to be her program mentor? Melangton, of course.
Before Taylor came into the picture, Cameron had shown zero interest in the 500 Festival Princess program. But suddenly, he was going to its events. He was going even when Melangton couldn’t be there.
One night, after Taylor stood up and gave her pitch on why she should be the queen, talking about running the Mini Marathon, nothing too deep, Melangton got a text from Cameron. “Our princess this year is amazing,” he wrote. “She did the best job of anybody.”
Eventually, when it was appropriate and Melangton wasn’t mentoring Taylor any longer, Cameron asked her out. And from there, the two’s love story began.
And it began to become ever more intertwined with IMS.
‘August? That’s safe, right?’
They didn’t mean to get married on qualification day. When Cameron proposed to Taylor in 2019 in Maine on a rock by a lake where he and his grandfather used to fish, they set a date of Aug. 15, 2020.
“August? That’s safe right?” Melangton said, laughing. “The only weekend there was nothing going on at the track.”
The couple sent out invitations, booked everything for their August wedding and then COVID hit.
“Then the whole race was moved. Everything moved. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Melangton said. “There’s like two days a year I can’t be at a wedding, and this is one of them.”
But Roger Penske and Mark Miles agreed. This was a day Melangton could be at a wedding, her son’s wedding. Miles took over her duties and showed up for the wedding after qualifications were finished.
And now, their baby is due on race day.
Of course, the worry about the due date isn’t really that serious. The entire family, both sides, are ecstatic for the impending birth. The baby will be the first grandchild on both sides of the family.
“Everybody’s over the moon,” said Taylor.
But the due date has brought with it a lot of jokes and suggestions. Many have told Cameron, a financial investment analyst, and Taylor they should go to the race and have the baby at the IMS medical center. Others have said whenever the baby is born, its middle name should be the name of the winning driver.
Others are predicting that because Takuma Sato won the Indy 500 in 2017, when Cameron and Taylor met, and again in 2020, when they were married, that he will definitely be the winner of the 2024 race.
“I like that it’s a full circle moment in our story. It’s fitting,” said Taylor. “We were definitely like, ‘Oh crap,’ but also we just think it’s amazing.”
Follow IndyStar sports reporter Dana Benbow on X: @DanaBenbow. Reach her via email: dbenbow@indystar.com
The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission on June 17 gave AES the nod to raise electricity rates enough to earn an additional $71 million each year, a decision that drew reproof from Indiana lawmakers who called it another blow to cost-burdened consumers.
The approved rate represents less than half of the $192 million increase that AES initially requested. It’s also less than the $91 million increase proposed in an October settlement agreement between AES, the city of Indianapolis and major electricity consumers like Kroger and Walmart.
But the new rate is still significantly more than what the Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor, the state agency representing ratepayers in the case, recommended in September. The OUCC’s proposal would have capped AES’s annual operating revenue at $21 million less than the current level.
The rate increase authorizes AES to earn a total of nearly $2 billion each year, or an estimated $384 million in profit.
The higher base rate comes as a double whammy for Indianapolis-area households, who are already paying more for electricity this summer after AES temporarily raised rates to account for higher-than-anticipated fuel costs during last winter’s storms. The increase also arrives against the backdrop of inflation, which rose to a three-year high last month, and surging gas prices due to the war in Iran.
Gov. Mike Braun wrote in a Wednesday post to X that he was “deeply disappointed” by the IURC’s approval of the rate increase.
“Hoosiers have spent years tightening their belts and making tough financial decisions,” Braun wrote. “It’s time for utility companies to do the same.”
The IURC’s decision also drew fire from the other side of the aisle. In a June 17 news release, five Democrats representing Indianapolis in the state Senate – J.D. Ford, Andrea Hunley, La Keisha Jackson, Fady Qaddoura, and Greg Taylor – chastised Indiana’s Republican supermajority for failing to rein in rising utility costs.
“Hoosiers pay more. Monopoly utilities collect more. And the leaders in the super-majority who promise affordability over and over again show those are just empty words,” the news release said. “Instead, they continue to defend a system that takes more and more out of our paychecks.”
The consumer advocacy group Citizens Action Coalition also slammed the rate increase. Ben Inskeep, CAC’s program director, said the decision left him “less optimistic that this commission is willing to do things differently and to actually hold utilities accountable.”
He said the IURC should have penalized AES for issues that plagued customers after the utility updated its billing system in 2023, including duplicated withdrawals for the same monthly bill.
The rate increase will take effect in two phases, with rates going up in July 2026 and January 2027. AES officials anticipate the hikes “will be less than $5 per month per phase” for a household that uses 1,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per month, according to a Wednesday news release from the utility.
“The IURC’s decision reflects a thorough, transparent process and balances the need for continued investment in the electric system with a focus on customer affordability,” the news release stated.
Under a state law that Braun signed in February, AES cannot ask for another increase to its base rate until January 2030 — though electricity bills could still go up for other reasons, like the fuel adjustment charge hitting consumers this month.
Three members of the five-member IURC signed off on the rate increase: Andy Zay, David Veleta, and David Ziegner. Commissioner Bob Deig dissented. Commissioner Anthony Swinger recused himself from the decision because he worked on the AES rate case for the OUCC before he was appointed to the IURC by Braun in January.
“None of this was taken lightly,” Zay, the IURC’s chair, said at the Wednesday hearing, adding that the commission and its staff had carefully weighed concerns about affordability. The commissioners did not go into further detail at the hearing.
But the commission’s order shows some of the debates that played out during the rate case. One point of contention was AES’s authorized return on equity — that is, how much the utility can earn each year in profits. Other disputes hinged on how AES forecasts its operating expenses.
The OUCC accused AES of including more than 100 “phantom hires,” vacant positions it did not necessarily intend to fill in its calculations. Last year, AES said that the rising costs of vegetation management, or trimming trees around power lines, also drove the need to raise rates. The OUCC recommended keeping vegetation management costs flat.
One factor that’s not driving higher prices? Data centers.
AES does not currently provide service to any data centers and did not include them in its calculations, AES president Brandi Davis-Handy said in testimony before the IURC.
Tilly Robinson is a Pulliam fellow for the Indianapolis Star. She can be reached at tilly.robinson@indystar.com.
Interactive radar | Weather alerts by county
WATCH LIVE COVERAGE
(WRTV) — A tornado watch has been issued through 1 a.m. EDT Thursday for much of Indiana, the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center said.
The watch area covers 47 of Indiana’s 92 counties, and includes Indianapolis and its surrounding counties.
Counties in the watch area are Bartholomew, Blackford, Boone, Brown, Carroll, Cass, Clay, Clinton, Daviess, Decatur, Delaware, Fountain, Grant, Greene, Hamilton, Hancock, Hendricks, Henry, Howard, Huntington, Jackson, Jay, Jennings, Johnson, Knox, Lawrence, Madison, Marion, Martin, Miami, Monroe, Montgomery, Morgan, Owen, Parke, Putnam, Randolph, Rush, Shelby, Sullivan, Tippecanoe, Tipton, Vermillion, Vigo, Wabash, Warren, and White.
WRTV Meteorologist Ryan Morse says Wednesday afternoon’s rain was the first of two rounds coming to the Hoosier state. A line of supercells were expected to form in Illinois and travel into central Indiana.
In neighboring Illinois, dozens of counties are under a tornado watch until 10 p.m. CDT/11 p.m. EST.
All threats of severe weather were on the table: damaging wind, strong tornadoes, large hail, and flooding.
Severe storms should exit Indiana in the early morning hours.
WISH-TV Meteorologist Keith Gibson says people should have multiple ways of getting alerts and have electronic devices fully charged in case they lose power.
The next chance for rain after these storms could be on Saturday.
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