Colonel Sanders facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Colonel Sanders
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Portrait of Sanders, in his iconic attire, painted by Norman Rockwell in 1973.
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Harland David Sanders
September 9, 1890 Henryville, Indiana, U.S.
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| Died | December 16, 1980 (aged 90) Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
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| Cause of death | Pneumonia, leukemia |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | La Salle Extension University |
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| Board member of | Kentucky Fried Chicken (founder) |
| Spouse(s) | Josephine King (divorced) Claudia Price |
| Children | 3 |
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Colonel Harland David Sanders (born September 9, 1890, died December 16, 1980) was an American businessman. He is famous for starting the fast-food chicken chain Kentucky Fried Chicken, which we now call KFC. He also became the face and symbol of the company. Even today, his name and picture are still used by KFC.
Before he became known as Colonel Sanders, he had many different jobs. He worked as a steam engine stoker, an insurance salesman, and even ran a gas station. He started selling his delicious fried chicken from his own roadside restaurant in North Corbin, Kentucky, during the Great Depression. Sanders soon realized that he could make his restaurant idea much bigger by letting others open their own KFC locations. The very first KFC franchise opened in Utah in 1952. The company grew incredibly fast across the United States and in other countries. This growth became too much for Sanders to handle, so in 1964, he sold the company to a group of investors for $2 million.
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Harland Sanders' Early Life and Jobs
In 1906, when he was 16, Harland Sanders moved to live with his uncle in New Albany, Indiana. His uncle worked for the streetcar company and helped Sanders get a job as a conductor.
Sanders later joined the United States Army in October 1906, even though he was too young. He served in Cuba as a teamster, which meant he drove wagons. He was honorably discharged in February 1907 and then moved to Sheffield, Alabama.
In 1909, Sanders found work with the Norfolk and Western Railway. While working there, he met Josephine King, and they got married. They had three children: a son named Harland Jr., who sadly died in 1932, and two daughters, Margaret and Mildred.
He then worked as a fireman on the Illinois Central Railroad. He and his family moved to Jackson, Tennessee. At night, Sanders studied law by mail through the La Salle Extension University. In 1920, Sanders started his own ferry boat company, which carried people and goods across the Ohio River.
Later, Sanders moved to Winchester, Kentucky, to work as a salesman for the Michelin Tire Company. He lost this job in 1924 when the company closed a factory. By chance, he met the manager of Standard Oil of Kentucky, who offered him a job running a service station in Nicholasville. However, this station closed in 1930 because of the Great Depression.
How Kentucky Fried Chicken Began
In 1952, Sanders shared his secret recipe for "Kentucky Fried Chicken" with Pete Harman in South Salt Lake, Utah. Harman ran one of the biggest restaurants in that city. In the first year of selling Sanders' chicken, Harman's restaurant sales more than tripled! A huge part of this increase, about 75%, came from selling fried chicken.
Sanders thought his restaurant in North Corbin would always be popular. But when he was 65, a new highway, Interstate 75, was built. This highway took customers away from his restaurant, so he decided to sell it. Sanders then focused on franchising his chicken idea. He traveled all over the United States, looking for restaurants that might want to sell his chicken. He even opened a new restaurant and company office in Shelbyville in 1959.
Sanders often slept in the back of his car during these trips. He would visit restaurants, offer to cook his chicken for them, and if they liked it, he would discuss franchise agreements. Even though these visits took a lot of time, soon, restaurant owners started coming to Sanders instead. The idea of franchising became very successful. KFC was one of the first fast-food chains to open locations in other countries, including Canada, England, Mexico, and Jamaica by the mid-1960s. Sanders even got a patent in 1962 to protect his special way of pressure frying chicken. In 1963, he trademarked the famous phrase "It's Finger Lickin' Good."
The company grew very quickly, with more than 600 locations. This rapid expansion became too much for Sanders, who was getting older. In 1964, at 73 years old, he sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million. In 1965, Sanders moved to Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, to look after his Canadian franchises. He continued to earn money from franchises and by making appearances for the company in both Canada and the U.S.
Even after selling the company, Sanders remained its famous symbol. He traveled about 200,000 miles each year for KFC, appearing in many TV commercials. He still had a lot of influence over the company's leaders and franchise owners, who respected his cooking skills.
Colonel Sanders' Public Image
In 1950, the Governor of Kentucky, Lawrence Wetherby, gave Sanders the honorary title of a Kentucky colonel. After this, Sanders started to dress the part. He grew a goatee (a small beard on his chin) and wore a black frock coat, which he later changed to a white suit. He also wore a string tie and began calling himself "Colonel."
For the last 20 years of his life, he always wore this outfit in public. He had a heavy wool suit for winter and a light cotton suit for summer. He even bleached his mustache and goatee to match his white hair.
Colonel Sanders' Death
In June 1980, Sanders was diagnosed with acute leukemia. He passed away at Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, from pneumonia on December 16, 1980, at the age of 90. Sanders had been active and making appearances in his white suit until just a month before he died. His body was displayed in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort, so people could pay their respects. A funeral service was held at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Chapel, with over 1,000 people attending. Colonel Sanders was buried in his famous white suit and black western string tie in Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.
Colonel Sanders' Legacy
By the time Colonel Sanders died, there were about 6,000 KFC restaurants in 48 countries around the world. The company was making $2 billion in sales every year.
As a Symbol of the KFC Brand
A made-up version of Colonel Sanders has often appeared as a mascot in KFC's advertisements. His voice has been used by impressionists in radio ads. From 1998 to 2001, an animated version of him, voiced by actor Randy Quaid, appeared in TV commercials. In May 2015, KFC brought back the Colonel Sanders character in new TV ads.
In April 2017, actor Rob Lowe was announced as the newest actor to play Colonel Sanders. Lowe shared that he actually met Harland Sanders when he was a child.
Beyond KFC
In Japan, there's a fun urban legend in the Nippon Professional Baseball league called the "Curse of the Colonel". In 1985, during a fan celebration, a statue of Colonel Sanders was thrown into a river and lost. According to the legend, this "curse" has caused Japan's Hanshin Tigers baseball team to play poorly ever since. People said that unless the statue was found, the Tigers would never win the Japan Series again. They did make it to the finals in 2003, 2005, and 2014, but they lost all three times.
Characters based on Colonel Sanders have also appeared in popular stories. The Colonel shows up in three special DC Comics issues. These comics make fun of other DC Comics titles, like The Colonel of Two Worlds and The Colonel Corps: The Crisis of Infinite Colonels. In these stories, he teams up with superheroes like Green Lantern and Flash, and even different versions of himself (like a female Colonel or a chicken version!). They fight villains such as the "Anti-Colonel." The writer of the comics, Tony Bedard, said it was "an honor" and "just plain fun" to work on these stories. In a 2018 episode of the TV show General Hospital, Sanders is shown to know a special computer language called Malbolge, which he uses to stop a bomb!
In the novel Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami, Colonel Sanders appears when an "abstract idea" looks like "a famous capitalist icon."
In 2017, KFC released a 96-page romance story called Tender Wings of Desire just in time for Mother's Day. It's set in Victorian England and is about a woman who has to choose between a calm life and a passionate man. Colonel Sanders is the love interest in the story, and it was available as a free download on Amazon.
One of Colonel Sanders' white suits, with its black clip-on bow-tie, was sold at an auction for $21,510 on June 22, 2013. Sanders had given the suit to Mike Morris, a resident of Cincinnati, because Sanders was close to Morris's family. Colonel Sanders even lived with the Morris family for six months after buying their house. The suit was bought by Maseo "Charlie" Watanabe, the president of Kentucky Fried Chicken of Japan. Watanabe put on the famous suit after winning the bid at the auction in Dallas, Texas.
In 2011, a handwritten book about cooking that Sanders wrote in the mid-1960s was found in the KFC archives. It includes some of Sanders' cooking recipes, along with stories and life lessons. KFC said they planned to try some of the recipes and publish the 200-page book online.
In 2010, the Oscar-winning animated short film LOGORAMA featured a rotoscoped (traced from live-action footage) depiction of Colonel Sanders in its early fast-food restaurant scenes.
Charitable Giving
Before he passed away, Sanders used his company shares to create the Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization. This is a registered charity in Canada. A part of the Mississauga Hospital for women's and children's care is named The Colonel Harland Sanders Family Care Centre. This was done to honor his very large donation. Sanders' foundation has also given significant amounts of money to other Canadian children's hospitals, including the McMaster Children's Hospital, IWK Health Centre, and Stollery Children's Hospital. In 2016, the foundation, which is based in Toronto, gave $500,000 to other Canadian charities.
Images for kids
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Sanders at the age of 7 with his mother in 1897.
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Sanders in 1914.
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Colonel Sanders' business card, c. late 1940s.
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A photograph of Colonel Sanders during a visit to Tehran sometime in the 1970s.
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Colonel Harland David Sanders, creator of Kentucky Fried Chicken, with Raul Diez Canseco in Louisville, USA.
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See also
In Spanish: Coronel Sanders para niños
