Herman Lay

Herman Warden Lay (March 6, 1909 – December 6, 1982) was an American businessman who was involved in potato chip manufacturing with his eponymous brand of Lay's potato chips. He started H.W. Lay Co., Inc., now part of the Frito-Lay corporation, a subsidiary of PepsiCo.[1]

Herman W. Lay
Portrait of Herman Lay as Chairman of the Board of PepsiCo, 1969
BornMarch 6, 1909 (1909-03-06)
Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.
DiedDecember 6, 1982 (1982-12-07) (aged 73)
Dallas, Texas, U.S.
Occupation(s)Businessman, philanthropist

Early life

Lay was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 6, 1909.[1][2] His father, Jesse N. Lay, worked for International Harvester, first as a bookkeeper in Charlotte and later as a commercial salesman in Columbia, South Carolina, where the family moved.[1] By 1920, they moved to Greenville, South Carolina.[1] In 1922 his mother died of cancer and his father remarried.[1] He then attended Furman University on an athletic scholarship for two years, but did not graduate.[1][2]

Career

He began his career at Sunshine Biscuits and was laid off because of the Great Depression.[3][4] He then worked as a traveling salesman for the Barrett Food Company, when he delivered potato chips to his customers in his Ford Model A.[5] His territory eventually expanded and his profits began to grow. In 1932, he borrowed US$100 and founded the H.W. Lay Distributing Company based in Atlanta, Georgia, a distributor for the Barrett Food Products Company, and began to hire employees.[6][7][8] He peddled potato chips from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee.[2][9] By 1937, he had 25 employees, and had begun producing his own line of snack foods.

The H.W. Lay & Company merged with The Frito Company in September 1961, creating the largest-selling snack food company in the United States, the Frito-Lay corporation.[1][2][10] In 1965, Herman W. Lay (chairman and chief executive officer of Frito-Lay) and Donald M. Kendall (President and chief executive officer of Pepsi-Cola) merged the two companies and formed PepsiCo, Inc.[11]

A philanthropist, he helped found the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE).[3]

Personal life

Lay married Sarah Amelia "Mimi" Harper[12] and had four children.[1] He died at the age of 73 on December 6, 1982.[1] His late son, Herman Warden Lay Jr., was a Dallas-based co-founder of a bottling company in Mexico for Pepsi and 7 Up.[13]

Legacy

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a room named after him.[14] His alma mater, Furman University, offers a scholarship in his name.[15] The Furman University Herman W. Lay Physical Activities Center is named after him.[16] The Lay Ornamental Garden in the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is named after him.[17]

In 1975, Lay received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.[18]

References
  1. Charlotte Mecklenburg Library Archived April 14, 2013, at archive.today
  2. Laura Lee, The Name's Familiar: Mr. Leotard, Barbie, and Chef Boy-Ar-Dee, Pelican Publishing, 1999, p. 159
  3. The Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies Archived July 30, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  4. Dirk E. Burhans, Crunch!: A History of the Great American Potato Chip, Terrace Books, 2008, p. 40
  5. Frito Lay history
  6. Happy 50th anniversary, Frito-Lay -- PEPline looks back at FLNA's history Archived February 1, 2013, at archive.today, Pesico Press release, September 29, 2011
  7. Texas State Historical Association
  8. "Snack Food Association". Archived from the original on November 29, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  9. Lovedeep Kaur, Advances in Potato Chemistry and Technology, Academic Press, 2009, p. 28
  10. The Wall Street Journal, Dallas
  11. PepsiCo, Our history Archived June 6, 2012, at the Wayback Machine
  12. "APSU benefactor, alumna, heiress to Frito-Lay Co. dies". Archived from the original on September 26, 2015. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
  13. Joe Simnacher, Herman Warden Lay Jr., son of snack icon who found his own success in business, dies at 66, Dallas News, 28 October 2011
  14. U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Meeting Space
  15. Furman University scholarships
  16. Physical Activities Center Furman University.
  17. "Lay Ornamental Garden". Archived from the original on May 10, 2012. Retrieved November 19, 2012.
  18. "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
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