Harland
David Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in a four-room house
east of Henryville, Indiana. He was the oldest of three children born
to Wilbur David and Margaret Ann Sanders.
The
family was of Irish and English ancestry and devout Christians,
regularly attending the Advent Christian Church. His father was a
mild and affectionate man who worked his 80-acre farm, until he broke
his leg after a fall before becoming a butcher in Henryville for two
years. Sanders' mother was a devout Christian and strict parent,
continuously warning her children of 'the evils of alcohol,
tobacco, gambling, and whistling on Sundays'.
 |
| Sanders (left) alongside his mother and younger siblings. |
One
summer afternoon in 1895, his father came home with a fever and died
later that day. Sanders' mother obtained work in a tomato cannery to
provide for her children, and the young Harland was required to look
after and cook for his siblings. By the age of seven, he was
reportedly skilled with bread and vegetables, and improving with
meat; the children foraged for food while their mother was away for
days at a time for work. When he was 10, Sanders began to work as a
farmhand.
In
1902, Sanders' mother remarried to William Broaddus, and the family
moved to Greenwood, Indiana. Sanders had a tumultuous relationship
with his stepfather. In 1903, he dropped out of seventh grade (later
stating that "algebra's what drove me off"), and went to
live and work on a nearby farm.
At
age 13, he left home. He then took a job painting horse carriages in
Indianapolis. When he was 14, he moved to southern Indiana to work as
a farmhand.
In
1906, at age 16, with his mother's approval, Sanders left the area to
live with his uncle in New Albany, Indiana. His uncle worked for the
streetcar company, and secured Sanders a job as a conductor, his
third job since leaving school three years earlier.
Later
that year Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the
United States Army in October, he completed his three month service
commitment as a wagoner in Cuba. He was honorably discharged in
February 1907 and moved to Sheffield, Alabama, where another of his
uncles lived. There, he met his brother Clarence who had also moved
there in order to escape their stepfather.
The
uncle worked for the Southern Railway, and secured Sanders a job
there as a blacksmith's helper in the workshops. After two months,
Sanders moved to Jasper, Alabama where he got a job cleaning out the
ash pans of trains from the Northern Alabama Railroad (a division of
the Southern Railway). Sanders progressed to become a steam engine
stoker by the age of 17.
 |
| A Fireman working on the railway. |
In
1909, Sanders found labouring work with the Norfolk and Western
Railway. While working on the railroad, he met Josephine King, and
they were married shortly afterwards. They would go on to have a son,
Harland, Jr., who would die in 1932 from infected tonsils, and two
daughters, Margaret and Mildred. He then found work as an engine
stoker, or fireman, on the Illinois Central Railroad, and he and his
family moved to Jackson, Tennessee.
During
this time Sanders studied law in the evenings by correspondence
through the La Salle Extension University, with the aim of becoming a
lawyer.
Sanders
lost his job at Illinois after he got into a brawl with a colleague.
Sanders then moved to work for the Rock Island Railroad, leaving his
wife Josephine and the children behind whilst he got settled.
When
Josephine stopped writing him letters he learned that Josie had left
him, given away all their furniture and household goods, and taken
the kids back to her parents’s home. Josie’s brother wrote
Sanders a letter saying, 'She had no business marryin’ a no-good
fellow like you who can’t hold a job'.
Sanders
went to Jasper, Alabama, where the Kings lived, and hid in the woods
near his in-law’s house, planning to kidnap his children when they
came out to play. When the kids failed to come outside, Sanders came
out of the woods and talked with his father-in-law on the porch, then
went inside and made peace with his wife.
After
a while, Sanders began to practice law in Little Rock, which he did
for three years. Unfortunately, his legal career ended after a
courtroom fistfight with his own client.
After
that, Sanders moved back with his mother in Henryville, and went to
work as a laborer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. In 1916, the family
moved to Jeffersonville, where Sanders got a job selling life
insurance for the Prudential Life Insurance Company.
Sanders
was eventually fired from this job for insubordination. He then moved
to Louisville and got a sales job with Mutual Benefit Life of New
Jersey.
In
1920, Sanders established a ferry boat company, which operated a boat
on the Ohio River between Jeffersonville and Louisville. He canvassed
for funding, becoming a minority shareholder himself, and was
appointed secretary of the company. The ferry was an instant success.
Around
1922 he took a job as secretary at the Chamber of Commerce in
Columbus, Indiana. He admitted that he was not very good at the job,
and resigned after less than a year. Sanders cashed in his ferry boat
company shares for $22,000 ($316,000 today) and used the money to
establish a company manufacturing acetylene lamps. The venture failed
after Delco introduced an electric lamp that it sold on credit.
Sanders
moved to Winchester, Kentucky, to work as a salesman for the Michelin
Tire Company. He lost his job in 1924 when Michelin closed its New
Jersey manufacturing plant.
In
1924, by chance, he met the general manager of Standard Oil of
Kentucky, who asked him to run a service station in Nicholasville. In
1930, the station closed as a result of the Great Depression.
 |
| Sanders working in his service station restaurant in 1930. |
In
1930, the Shell Oil Company offered Sanders a service station in
North Corbin, Kentucky, rent free, in return for paying the company a
percentage of sales. Sanders began to serve chicken dishes and other
meals such as country ham and steaks. Initially he served the
customers in his adjacent living quarters before opening a
restaurant.
It
was during this period that Sanders was involved in a shootout with
Matt Stewart, a local competitor, over the repainting of a sign
directing traffic to his station. Stewart killed a Shell employee who
was with Sanders and was convicted of murder, eliminating Sanders's
competition.
Sanders
was commissioned as a Kentucky colonel in 1935 by Kentucky governor
Ruby Laffoon. His local popularity grew, and, in 1939, food critic
Duncan Hines, a pioneer of restaurant ratings, visited Sanders's
restaurant and included it in Adventures in Good Eating, his guide to
restaurants throughout the US. The entry read:
Corbin,
KY. Sanders Court and Café
Open
all year except Xmas.
A
very good place to stop en route to Cumberland Falls and the Great
Smokies. Continuous 24-hour service. Sizzling steaks, fried chicken,
country ham, hot biscuits.
In
July 1939, Sanders acquired a motel in Asheville, North Carolina. His
North Corbin restaurant and motel was destroyed in a fire in November
1939, and Sanders had it rebuilt as a motel with a 140-seat
restaurant.
By
July 1940, Sanders had finalized his "Secret Recipe" for
frying chicken in a pressure fryer that cooked the chicken faster
than pan frying. As the United States entered World War II in
December 1941, gas was rationed, and as the tourism dried up, Sanders
was forced to close his Asheville motel. He went to work as a
supervisor in Seattle until the latter part of 1942.
He
later ran cafeterias for the government at an ordnance works in
Tennessee, followed by a job as assistant cafeteria manager in Oak
Ridge, Tennessee.
It
was during this period that he began an affair with his mistress,
Claudia Ledington-Price, who he made a manager of the North Corbin
restaurant and motel. In 1942, he sold the Asheville business.
In
1947, he and Josephine divorced and Sanders married Claudia in 1949,
as he had long desired. Sanders was "re-commissioned" as a
Kentucky colonel in 1950 by his friend, Governor Lawrence Wetherby.
After being recommissioned as a Kentucky colonel, Sanders began to
dress the part, growing a goatee and wearing a black frock coat
(later switching to a white suit), a string tie, and referring to
himself as "Colonel." His associates went along with the
title change, "jokingly at first and then in earnest,"
according to biographer Josh Ozersky.
 |
| The sign made for the first ever Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. |
His
look became so iconic over the decades that he never wore anything
else in public during the last 20 years of his life, using a heavy
wool suit in the winter and a light cotton suit in the summer. He
even bleached his mustache and goatee to match his white hair.
In
1952, Sanders franchised his secret recipe "Kentucky Fried
Chicken" for the first time, to Pete Harman of South Salt Lake,
Utah, the operator of one of that city's largest restaurants. In the
first year of selling the product, restaurant sales more than
tripled, with 75% of the increase coming from sales of fried chicken.
For
Harman, the addition of fried chicken was a way of differentiating
his restaurant from competitors; in Utah, a product hailing from
Kentucky was unique and evoked imagery of Southern hospitality. Don
Anderson, a sign painter hired by Harman, coined the name Kentucky
Fried Chicken.
After
Harman's success, several other restaurant owners franchised the
concept and paid Sanders 4 cents per chicken.
Sanders
believed that his North Corbin restaurant would remain successful
indefinitely, but at age 65 sold it after the new Interstate 75
reduced customer traffic. Left only with his savings and $105 a month
from Social Security, Sanders decided to begin to franchise his
chicken concept in earnest, and traveled the US looking for suitable
restaurants.
After
closing the North Corbin site, Sanders and Claudia opened a new
restaurant and company headquarters in Shelbyville in 1959. Often
sleeping in the back of his car, Sanders visited restaurants, offered
to cook his chicken, and if workers liked it negotiated franchise
rights.
Although
such visits required much time, eventually potential franchisees
began visiting Sanders instead. He ran the company while Claudia
mixed and shipped the spices to restaurants.
The
franchise approach became highly successful; KFC was one of the first
fast food chains to expand internationally, opening outlets in Canada
and later in the UK, Mexico and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. Sanders
obtained a patent protecting his method of pressure frying chicken in
1962, and trademarked the phrase "It's Finger Lickin' Good"
in 1963.
The
company's rapid expansion to more than 600 locations became
overwhelming for the ageing Sanders. In 1964, then 73 years old, he
sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million ($15.8
million today) to a partnership of Kentucky businessmen headed by
John Y. Brown, Jr.,a 29-year-old lawyer and future governor of
Kentucky, and Jack C. Massey, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur.
Sanders became a salaried brand ambassador.
 |
| Sanders often took part in commercials for KFC. |
The
initial deal did not include the Canadian operations, which Sanders
retained, or the franchising rights in the UK, Florida, Utah, and
Montana, which Sanders had already sold to others.
In
1965, Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario to oversee his Canadian
franchises and continued to collect franchise and appearance fees
both in Canada and in the US. Sanders bought and lived in a bungalow
at 1337 Melton Drive in the Lakeview area of Mississauga from 1965 to
1980.
In
September 1970 he and his wife were baptized in the Jordan River.
Sanders
remained the company's symbol after selling it, traveling 200,000
miles a year on the company's behalf and filming many TV commercials
and appearances. He retained much influence over executives and
franchisees, who respected his culinary expertise and feared what The
New Yorker described as 'the force and variety of his swearing' when a restaurant or the company varied from what executives
described as 'the Colonel's chicken'. One change the
company made was to the gravy, which Sanders had bragged was so good
that 'it'll make you throw away the durn chicken and just eat
the gravy' but which the company simplified to reduce time and
cost.
As
late as 1979 Sanders made surprise visits to KFC restaurants, and if
the food disappointed him, he denounced it to the franchisee as 'God-damned slop' and threw it on the floor.
In
1973, Sanders sued Heublein Inc.—the then parent company of
Kentucky Fried Chicken—over the alleged misuse of his image in
promoting products he had not helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc.
unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly described
their gravy as being 'sludge' with a 'wall-paper
taste'.
 |
| Sanders and his wife reopened their Shelbyville restaurant. |
Sanders
and his wife reopened their Shelbyville restaurant as 'Claudia
Sanders, The Colonel's Lady' and served KFC-style chicken there
as part of a full-service dinner menu, and talked about expanding the
restaurant into a chain. He was sued by the company for it.
After
reaching a settlement with Heublein, he sold the Colonel's Lady
restaurant, and it has continued to operate, currently as the Claudia
Sanders Dinner House. It serves his 'original recipe' fried
chicken as part of its non-fast-food dinner menu, and it is the only
non-KFC restaurant that serves an authorised version of the fried
chicken recipe.
Sanders
remained critical of Kentucky Fried Chicken's food. In the late 1970s
he told the Louisville Courier-Journal:
'My
God, that gravy is horrible. They buy tap water for 15 to 20 cents a
thousand gallons and then they mix it with flour and starch and end
up with pure wallpaper paste. And I know wallpaper paste, by God,
because I've seen my mother make it. ... There's no nutrition in it
and they ought not to be allowed to sell it. ... crispy recipe is
nothing in the world but a damn fried dough ball stuck on some
chicken.'
Sanders
was diagnosed with acute leukaemia in June 1980. He died at Jewish
Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky of pneumonia on December 16, 1980 at
the age of 90. Sanders had remained active until the month before his
death, appearing in his white suit to crowds.
His
body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in
Frankfort after a funeral service at the Southern Baptist Theological
Seminary Chapel, which was attended by more than 1,000 people.
Sanders was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western
string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.
By
the time of Sanders' death, there were an estimated 6,000 KFC outlets
in 48 countries worldwide, with $2 billion ($5.9 billion today) of
sales annually.
A
fictionalized Colonel Sanders has repeatedly appeared as a mascot in
KFC's advertising and branding ever since his death. Sanders has been
voiced by impressionists in radio ads, and from 1998 to 2001 an
animated version of him voiced by Randy Quaid appeared in television
commercials. In May 2015, KFC reprised the Colonel Sanders character
in new television advertisements, with multiple actors playing the
role each year since.
Members
of the WWE franchise have repeatedly dressed up as the colonel in
recent years, with one wrestler, Dolph Ziggler, dressed as Colonel
Sanders beating up a man in a chicken suit in a wrestling ring during
SummerSlam 2016.
The
Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball league has developed an urban
legend of the "Curse of the Colonel". The curse was said to
be placed on the team because of the Colonel's anger over treatment
of one of his store-front statues, which was thrown into the
Dōtonbori River by celebrating Hanshin fans following their team's
victory in the 1985 Japan Championship Series.
As
is common with sports-related curses, the Curse of the Colonel was
used to explain the team's subsequent 18-year losing streak. Some
fans believed the team would never win another Japan Series until the
statue had been recovered.
 |
| The Colonel Sanders statue following it's recovery. |
The
Colonel was finally discovered in the Dōtonbori River on March 10,
2009. Divers who recovered the statue at first thought it was only a
large barrel, and shortly after a human corpse, but Hanshin fans on
the scene were quick to identify it as the upper body of the
long-lost Colonel. The right hand and lower body were found next day,
but the statue is still missing its glasses and left hand. It is said
that the only way the curse can be lifted is by returning his
long-lost glasses and left hand.
The
statue was later recovered (with replacement of new glasses and hand)
and returned to the KFC Japan. As the KFC branch that the statue
originally belonged to no longer exists, the statue was now placed in
the branch near Koshien Stadium.
One
of Colonel Sanders' white suits with its black clip-on bow-tie was
sold at auction for $21,510 by Heritage Auctions on June 22, 2013.
The suit had been given to Cincinnati resident Mike Morris by
Sanders, who was close to Morris's family. The Morris family house
was purchased by Col. Sanders, and Sanders lived with the family for
six months. The suit was purchased by Kentucky Fried Chicken of Japan
president Maseo Watanabe. Watanabe put on the famous suit after
placing the winning bid at the auction event in Dallas, Texas.
Before
his death Sanders used his stock holdings to create the Colonel
Harland Sanders Charitable Organization, a registered Canadian
charity. The wing of Mississauga Hospital for women's and children's
care is named The Colonel Harland Sanders Family Care Centre in honor
of his substantial donation. Sanders' foundation has also made
sizeable donations to other Canadian children's hospitals.
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