John Y. Brown Jr., KFC Mogul and Kentucky Governor, Dies at 88
John Y. Brown Jr., a natural-born salesman who became a millionaire by turning Kentucky Fried Chicken into a global brand and then selling himself to voters in a flashy six-minute television show week to become governor of Kentucky, serving one term, died Tuesday in Lexington, Ky. He was 88 years old.
His family said the death in hospital was due to complications of Covid-19.
Brown, a 30-year-old attorney at the time, and a fellow investor purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from its founder, Harlan Sanders, for $2 million in 1964 (about $19.3 million). nowadays). Over the next seven years, he transformed a national chain of about 600 restaurants into one of the largest fast food chains in the world, with about 3,000 red and white striped takeout stores.
He sold the business in 1971 to Heublein Inc., the winemaker, for an estimated personal profit of more than $30 million (about $225 million today).
An extraordinary Democratic fundraiser, Mr. Brown, son of a former Kentucky congressman and state legislator, initially flirted with a political career, considering running for the US Senate before decided to decline at the last minute and then evaluated a bid for governor in 1975 before again declining to enter the race.
However, in 1979, recently married to Phyllis George, a pioneering sports broadcaster and former Miss America, Mr. Brown participated in a six-week television campaign for the Democratic governor’s nomination and defeated a number of candidates by margin. most are less than 30%. He then easily defeated Louie B. Nunn, the former Republican governor, in November of that year.
Suffering from an economic downturn, Mr. Brown compiled a mixed record as the executive director of the state. A self-described “policy maker and financial manager,” he sought to attract investment by promoting “Kentucky & Co.” as “the state operates as an enterprise.” But to keep the state solvent, he has had to shrink the government’s payroll to thousands while trying to avoid large cuts to services.
Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau and Bruce L. McClure wrote in “Kentucky’s Governors” (1985) “He was a good steward of the resources of the commonwealth, but he was not the leader who proposed the chapters. new programs in areas such as education or human resources.” .
After ending his term in December 1983, Mr. Brown entered the 1984 Kentucky Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat but withdrew six weeks later, citing due to the lingering effects of the life-threatening heart bypass surgery he underwent in his final year as governor. . In 1987, he again sought the governor’s nomination but placed second in the Democratic primary. By then, his luster as a potential national candidate had faded.
His investing career continued after buying Kentucky Fried Chicken. In 1969, he bought control of the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association. The team won the league championship in 1975 but was eliminated when the ABA merged with the National Basketball Association the following year. Mr. Brown later bought a half stake in the NBA’s Buffalo Braves, a former expansion team.
But when he was blocked from transferring the Braves to Louisville, Ky., Mr. Brown and a partner made a deal with the ownership of the Boston Celtics to swap teams. (The new owners quickly moved the Braves to San Diego and then Los Angeles as the Clippers.) In Boston, Mr. Brown alienated loyalists by swapping famous players before selling the team that year. 1979.
He also founded a chain of roasted chicken restaurants with a country music star Kenny Rogers, call it Kenny Rogers Roasters. It grew to 350 stores, but competition from Kentucky Fried Chicken, then known as KFC, and the Boston Chicken chain (later known as Boston Market) caused it to go bankrupt in 1998. (Later. , it was acquired by Nathan’s Famous.)
John Young Brown Jr. was born in Lexington on December 28, 1933. John Sr. was a probationary attorney who served one term in the United States House of Representatives in the mid-1930s and was a member of the Kentucky House of Representatives for several decades. He lost longtime US Senate and gubernatorial races — defeats that haunted his son and later John Jr. blames machine politicians his father refused to support. His mother is Dorothy (Inman) Brown.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in 1957 and his law degree in 1960, both from the University of Kentucky, and served in the Army Reserve from 1959 to 1965.
With entrepreneurial instincts, in high school, Mr. Brown earned up to $1,000 in commissions a month on a summer job selling vacuum cleaners, and $25,000 a year selling Encyclopaedia Britannica while studying law. .
He is also a high-stakes gambler, a habit that opponents will use against him. He was investigated for failing to make a required report of a $1.3 million cash withdrawal from one of his bank accounts, although he has never been charged with conduct. wrong.
Mr. Brown’s first marriage to Eleanor Duall, who was known as Ellie, ended in divorce. In 1973, president’s name of Colonel Kentucky after she bought the majority of the team’s stock, she became first woman to be on top a large professional basketball team.
His marriage to Miss George, in 1979, also ended in 1979. divorceyear 1998. She died of a rare blood cancer in 2020 at the age of 70 after a long career as a CBS sports broadcaster in which she broke barriers in 1975 by joining the all-male cast of program “The NFL Today”.
His third marriage, to Jill Louise Roachformer Kentucky woman, which ended in divorce in 2003.
Mr. Brown has three children from his first marriage, Sissy Brown, Sandra Brown Steier and John Y. Brown III, who served as Kentucky’s secretary of state in the late 1990s and early 2000s; and two children from his marriage to Mrs. George, Lincoln Tyler George Brown and Pamela Brown, senior Washington correspondent and weekend host for CNN.