THE AMAZING STORY OF KFC’S COLONEL HARLAND SANDERS!

“Finger Licking Good!” You have to travel to some very remote places on the globe to find someone that doesn’t recognize the image of Colonel Harland Sanders who built a restaurant franchise based on delicious southern fried chicken.

 Colonel Sanders was born on September 9, 1890, in Henryville, Indiana. He was the oldest of three children and his father died when he was only five years old. His mother was very religious and warned the children of the evils of tobacco, gambling, and the horrible sin of whistling on a Sunday. His mother worked at a tomato cannery and Harland helped take care of his siblings. When he was 12, his mother remarried and the family moved outside of Indianapolis. Harland hated his stepdad and he dropped out of school in the seventh grade. When asked why he quit school Harlan said “it was algebra that drove him off”. 

By age 13, Harland had left home and he got a job painting carriages in Indianapolis. At age 14, he moved to Southern Indiana to New Albany, to live with his uncle, who got him a job as a streetcar operator. In1906 being only 16 years old, lied about his age and joined the army. He was sent to Cuba and spent a few months as a Waggoner. The next year he got out of the army, moved to where his uncle was now in Jasper, Alabama, and got a job with the Southern Railway. He worked for the railroad as a blacksmith helper. He cleaned ash pans, was a fireman, and three years later he was fired for insubordination. This was just the first of many of his failures. 

He then got a job with the Norfolk and Western Railway, and met his future wife, Josephine King. The couple had three children and sadly, his son died at age 20 from blood poisoning after contracting tonsillitis. Soon after that he worked for the Illinois Central Railroad and the family moved to Jackson, Tennessee. Here he studied law by correspondence course at the La Salle Extension University. He got fired from his job yet again for fighting a co-worker. This time his wife had had enough and she moved back in with her parents and took the kids with her. 

Harland Sanders eventually graduated and practice law for three years in Little Rock, Arkansas. Few people know that Colonel Sanders was a lawyer, but just like every other job he had, he failed at this one too. He actually got in a fight with one of his clients in the courtroom! His own client! After that episode, he moved in with his mother in Henryville, Indiana and worked as a labor on the Pennsylvania Railroad. By 1916, he moved to Jeffersonville, Indiana, just across the river from Louisville. Here he sold life insurance for the Prudential Life Insurance Company. What do you think happened at this job? You guessed it, he was fired for insubordination. 

Harland then got another life insurance sales job in Louisville. He invested some money in a ferry boat business and a few years later cashed in his shares for $22,000. That’s about $330,000 in today’s money. He used his money to start a lamp manufacturing company. The competition ran him out of the business and once again, Harland Sanders was a failure. 

Then he moved to Winchester, Kentucky and became a tire salesman for Michelin. In 1924, Harland lost his job yet again, but he was noticed by the General Manager of the Standard Oil Company of Kentucky who hired him to run a gas station in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Harland worked there from 1924 until 1930, but unfortunately, in 1930, it was the beginning of the Great Depression, and they had to close down the gas station. Harland Sanders was yet again a failure. In that same year 1930 the Shell Oil Company hired him to run a gas station in Corbin Kentucky. Notice how much he moved all over the map! 

His gas station was right on the main drag of Corbin on US-25. It was at this time, in the back of his gas station he began cooking for customers. The word got out about how good his chicken was, so he opened up a restaurant across the street from his gas station. He also opened up a motel. It was around this time that he began to paint advertisements for his business on barns and signs all around the area. His competition was a man named Matt Stewart and he owned a Standard Oil gas station in the same town. Stewart kept painting over Harland’s signs and repainting advertisements for his own business. Sanders got word that Stewart was in the process of painting over one of his signs and Sanders grabbed two Shell executives and headed out to the site to confront Stewart. 

The conversation got hot real quick and pistols were drawn. Stewart shot and killed the Shell District Manager Robert Gibson, and then Sanders shot Stewart right in the shoulder. Stewart served 18 years in prison. That’s one way to get rid of your competition, shoot him and send him to prison!

In1935, Kentucky Governor Ruby Lafoon tried Harland’s chicken and liked it so well that he made him an honorary Kentucky Colonel. Governor Lafoon was known for making over 5,000 people Kentucky Colonels, it’s what he’s known for. One has to imagine if Lafoon had not made Harland Sanders a Kentucky Colonel, he may not have had the image that helped launch the KFC empire. In 1939. 

He developed cooking his chicken in a pressure cooker. It made the chicken have less grease, more flavor and better texture. In World War II gas was rationed, so Colonel Sanders went to Seattle to find work. Later, he ran cafeterias at government installations in Tennessee. 

In 1947, he divorced his wife, Josephine, and then he married one of his employees, Claudia Ledington-Price. It was in 1949 when he began to embrace his title of Colonel! He dyed his facial hair white, and wore a black overcoat everywhere he went, but he soon changed to a white coat due to the flour from the chicken getting all over his black coat. At this point, his chicken had developed a name for itself and there became a demand all over for it. In 1952 he sold his first franchise to sell his chicken, in Salt Lake City of all places. 

Colonel Sanders made four cents for every chicken they sold, and that later went to five cents. That restaurant in Salt Lake City is the one that developed the famous bucket that we’re all familiar with. By 1955. Colonel Sanders knew that I-75 was going to be coming through and by seven miles, bypass his service station in Corbin. He knew that he would eventually fail at his restaurant in his hotel. 

After finally having 20 years of decent success, Harland took his first Social Security check of $105 and hit the road! From 1955 until 1964. He traveled all over the country opening up Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. His wife Claudia opened up a restaurant in Shelbyville, Kentucky, and she helped to ship the spices all over the country. It was at this time that he got a patent for his pressure cooker and he developed the phrase of “Finger Licking Good”! Colonel Sanders was in his late 60s, but he would come to a restaurant and offer to cook his chicken for a couple of days until they realized how well it would take off. In 1964 he reluctantly sold Kentucky Fried Chicken to John Y. Brown and Jack Massey. It took them two weeks to convince Colonel Sanders to sell them the franchise. They guaranteed to never tamper with his recipe and scared him as to what would happen to the franchises if he passed away. 

He sold them Kentucky Fried Chicken for $2 million and he maintained all the assets of the Canadian Kentucky Fried Chickens. They gave him a salary of $40,000 a year from 1965 until 1980, Colonel Sanders lived in Ontario, Canada and oversaw the stores in Canada. He made many appearances as the Colonel and he traveled about 200,000 miles a year! Later in life he became very religious and in 1970 was baptized in the River Jordan in Israel.

In 1975 and 1979 Harland sued Kentucky Fried Chicken, and they sued him back. Sanders said that they had turned his gravy into slop and it was now like wallpaper paste. Both times the lawsuits were settled out of court, and they have undisclosed details. The last two decades of Colonel Sanders life he was never seen in public without his traditional white suit. It is said that he swore like crazy. Colonel Sanders stated, “I did my cussin’ before women or anybody else, but somehow nobody ever took offense”. 

Colonel Sanders died of leukemia on December 16, 1980. in Louisville, Kentucky. He laid in state at the rotunda at the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort. More than 1,000 people came to his funeral. He is buried in Cave Hill Cemetery and Louisville, Kentucky. 

When he died, there was more than 6,000 Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in 48 countries, and today is the second largest franchise behind only McDonald’s. Colonel Harland Sanders was a man that continued to fail almost all of his life, but he just kept trying and eventually became a world famous icon that almost everyone is familiar with. His finding of tremendous success late in life should give us all inspiration. The next time that you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken, you’ll know the story of the man, Colonel Harland Sanders. 

Video by Family Tree Nuts at the grave of Colonel Harland Sanders, in Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, Kentucky