Harland Sanders

Infobox Person
name=Harland David "Colonel" Sanders


image_size=150px
caption=
birth_date=birth date|1890|9|16|mf=y
birth_place=Henryville, Indiana, U.S.
death_date=death date and age|1980|12|16|1890|9|9|mf=y
death_place=Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
occupation= restaurateur
spouse= Josephine King (divorced)
Claudia Price [http://www.nndb.com/people/557/000109230/ Colonel Sanders] . www.nndb.com]
parents= Wilbur David Sanders
Margaret Ann Sanders (née Dunlevy) [cite web | url=http://www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/colonel-sanders/index.html?cj=1&o_xid=0001177077&o_lid=0001177077 | title=Harlan Sander's Family Tree | work=www.genealogy.com]
children= Margaret Sanders
Brandon Sanders, Grant Sanders.
Mildred Sanders

Harland David Sanders, better known as Colonel Sanders (September 9, 1890 – December 16, 1980), was an American entrepreneur who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). His image is omnipresent in the chain's advertising and packaging, and his name is sometimes used as a synonym for the KFC product or restaurant itself.

Early life and career

Sanders was born in Henryville, Indiana. His father died when he was six years old, and since his mother worked, he was required to cook for his family. He dropped out of school in seventh grade. During his teen years, Sanders worked many jobs, including steamboat driver, insurance salesman, railroad fireman, farmer, and enlisted in the Army as a private in 1918, although he spent his entire service in Cuba.

At the age of 40, Sanders cooked chicken dishes and other meals for people who stopped at his service station in Corbin, Kentucky. Since he did not have a restaurant, he served customers in his living quarters in the service station. Eventually, his local popularity grew, and Sanders moved to a motel and restaurant that seated 142 people and worked as the chef. Over the next nine years, he perfected his method of cooking chicken. Furthermore, he made use of a pressure fryer that allowed the chicken to be cooked much faster than by pan-frying.

He was given the honorary title "Kentucky Colonel" in 1935 by Governor Ruby Laffoon. Sanders chose to call himself "Colonel" and to dress in a stereotypical "Southern gentleman" style as a way of self-promotion.

After the construction of Interstate 75 reduced his restaurant's customer traffic, Sanders took to franchising Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, starting at age 65, using $105.00 from his first Social Security check to fund visits to potential franchisees. ["I've Got A Secret" interview, originally broadcast April 6, 1964 (rebroadcast by GSN March 30, 2008).]

Sanders sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation, in 1964, for $2,000,000 to a pair of Kentucky businessmen. The deal did not include the Canadian operations, where Sanders continued to collect franchise fees. In 1973 he sued Heublein Inc. (the KFC parent company at the time) over 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 referred to their gravy as "sludge" with a "wallpaper taste". [cite book |last=Kleber |first=John E. |authorlink= |coauthors=Thomas D. Clark, Lowell H. Harrison, and James C. Klotter |title=The Kentucky Encyclopedia |year=1992 |month=June |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=0-81311-772-0 |pages=page 796]

In 1965 Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario to oversee his Canadian franchises. Sanders later used his shares to create the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust and Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization, which used the proceeds to aid charities and fund scholarships. The Colonel continued on with Kentucky Fried Chicken as its spokesperson and collected appearance fees for his visits to franchises in the United States and Canada. His trusts continue to donate money to groups like the Trillium Health Care Centre; a wing of their building specializes in women's and children's care and has been named after him. [http://www.trilliumhealthcentre.org/about/mississauga.html]

Death and legacy

Sanders died in Louisville, Kentucky, of pneumonia on December 16, 1980. [cite web|date=1980-12-29 | accessdate=2008-05-19 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922291,00.html |work= Time |title=Milestones] [cite news|date=1980-12-17|accessdate=2008-05-18 |work=The Washington Post | title=Col. Sanders, 90, Dies of Pneumonia] He had been diagnosed with acute leukemia the previous June.cite news|author= Edith Evans Asbury |date=1980-12-17 |title=Col. Harland Sanders, Founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dies: [Obituary] |work=The New York Times |page=A33 |accessdate=2008-05-19| documentid=936479241] His body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol; after a funeral service at the Southern Baptist Seminary Chapel attended by more than 1,000 people, he was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.

He had a son, Harland, Jr., who died at a young age, and two daughters, Margaret Sanders and Mildred Ruggles.

Since his death, Colonel Sanders has been portrayed by voice actors in Kentucky Fried Chicken commercials on the radio, and an animated version of him has been used for television commercials (voiced by actor Randy Quaid).

The Colonel's secret flavor recipe of 11 herbs and spices that creates the famous "finger lickin' good" chicken remains a trade secret. [cite news|publisher=the Guardian|url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/food/story/0,,1602693,00.html|accessdate=2008-01-17|title=Anatomy of a dish:KFC Family Feast - eight pieces of chicken(known as the "finger lickin chicken"), four regular fries, gravy and corn cobettes, £9.99|author=Andrew Shanahan|date=2005-10-28] Portions of the secret spice mix are made at different locations in the United States, and the only complete copy of the recipe was formerly kept in a vault in corporate headquarters. [According to a profile of KFC done by the Food Network television show "Unwrapped".] On September 9 2008, the one complete copy was temporarily moved to an undisclosed location under extremely tight security while KFC revamped the security at its corporate headquarters. Before the temporary move, KFC disclosed the following details about the recipe and its security arrangements: [cite news|url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080909/ap_on_re_us/kfc_secret |title= KFC shoring up security for secret recipe |author=Schreiner, Bruce, Associated Press |publisher="Yahoo! News" |date=2008-09-09 |accessdate=2008-09-21]
* The recipe, which includes exact amounts of each component, is written in pencil on a single sheet of notebook paper and signed by Sanders.
* The recipe was locked in a filing cabinet with two separate combination locks. The cabinet also included vials of each of the 11 herbs and spices used.
* Only two executives had access to the recipe at any one time. KFC refuses to disclose the names and titles of either executive.
* One of the two executives said that no one had come close to guessing the contents of the secret recipe, and added that the actual recipe would include some surprises.

References

Further reading

*Pearce, John, "The Colonel" (1982) ISBN 0-385-18122-1
*cite book|author=Kleber, John J. et al.|title=The Kentucky Encyclopedia|location=Lexington, KY|publisher=University of Kentucky Press|year=1992|id=ISBN 0-8131-1772-0

External links

* [http://www.kfc.com Kentucky Fried Chicken]

Multimedia

* [http://archives.cbc.ca/lifestyle/food/clip/8350/ CBC Archives] CBC Radio talks with Colonel Sanders about Canadian food and cooking (from 1957).