Wilbur Ross: Risks and Returns

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Colonel Harlan David Sanders was an American businessman known for founding the fast-food corporation Kentucky Fried Chicken. Colonel Sanders did something that no other restaurant founder dared to do. He became his company’s own mascot and brand ambassador. Here to share the story of KFC and a little about who Colonel Sanders was is Adam Chandler, the author of Drive Through Dreams.

Take it away.

Adam, the story of Colonel Sanders and KFC is one of the best stories there is in fast food. There’s nothing else like it. Guy who was born into poverty, grew up on a rural farm. He’s basically an orphan. He raises his own family while his mother’s working after his father dies at a very young age, and he works every job imaginable for the first six, seven decades of his life. He’s selling tires; he’s working for the Chamber of Commerce; he’s building ferries; he’s working on trains; he’s trying to become a lawyer. He does all of these different things, and he finds success in some of them, and he fails at other ones, and he just, he keeps trying, and he ends up in a small gas station that he owns in southeastern Kentucky, and basically his entire focus is trying to beat out the other gas stations for customers on the newly built roads that are happening in southeastern Kentucky, the Dixie Highway, and he ultimately succeeds by having excellent service and excellent food. And that’s the beginning of fried chicken. He loves it. He creates an electric pressure cooker, patents it to make fried chicken faster than anyone has ever made fried chicken before, and it is a hit. He gets written up in national publications, and eventually he turns this idea into a franchise. He goes around and patents the recipe and sells the idea on handshake deals to small mom-and-pop shops and diners all around Appalachia and the Midwest, basically just saying, “Here’s the recipe for my chicken. I’ll send you the seasoning, and you give me five cents for every chicken that you cook.” It’s the most homespun thing imaginable. It sounds completely insane today, but this is how he built his empire. Eventually he started opening these standalone stores. And mind you, he was sixty-six when this happened.

He was old.

That was the standard age that you were suspected to possibly pass on at that point. That was the life expectancy—was where he was basically at—when he decides to turn KFC into an empire. And he could have just retired; he would have been fine doing it, but instead he goes out on the road and he just creates this brand that everyone falls in love with, and it expands around the world, and he becomes one of the most famous men in the world after living in obscurity for so long, because he’s got this big personality, he’s got this drive, and he’s got this really strong belief in his product. And you know, the white planter suit with the tie—that’s all something that he came up with as a way to kind of brand himself. He was a Kentucky Colonel, which is an honorary title in Kentucky, and he uses this to market himself as the Colonel. There are thousands of Kentucky Colonels out there. There’s only one Roald Sanders, and everybody knows who he is. He gets on television; he’s in movies; he becomes this character. He becomes the second most recognizable figure in the world according to one poll in the nineteen seventies. And that’s not something that happens to a lot of people. But through sheer force of will and a lot of skill, he manages to do this, and that idea is still a cherished part of the brand’s motto: doing things the hard way, the way that the Colonel did it. So this story of sort of perseverance and a real belief in self and in your own invention is a huge reason why we know KFC the world around. What’s great about the fast-food story, and this is still true to some extent today, is you didn’t need a college degree or really great connections to make it in the fast-food industry when it was starting out. Looking at the early stories of the founders, most of them didn’t graduate high school, much less go to college. They were salespeople. They were salesmen driving around the country trying to sort out a way to create a business model that would be sustainable. A lot of them served in the Armed Forces at some point and kind of learned what the meaning of regimented service and operations are. And they just worked hard and created a system that was very popular. So all of these really big American ideals that we cherish is hard work, and that part of the American story really comes to bear in fast food. And it’s not just the big recognizable names, you know, there are also these small entrepreneurs who open franchises and are able to become wealthy in a way that you would think you would need connections or advanced degrees to get. And that’s just not the story of fast food. There are so many different people—all ages, all backgrounds, all ethnicities—that managed to create something special in that post-war era.

And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Madison Dericot, and a special thanks to Adam Chandler, author of Drive Through Dreams. And by the way, go to OurAmericanStories.com, and you can hear the full story of so many of the other fast-food and drive-through restaurants that were formed and founded by men and women just like Colonel Sanders.

And this is the distinct nature of this business.

It didn’t take a Ph.D., or a J.D., or a B.S., or even a high school degree. He wanted to provide better service for his customers and his gas station. He kicked around a long time. In his sixties, he finally lives that American dream. But boy, does he hustle! And he’s driving from town to town selling his recipe and his patent. And by the way, the number of people who got wealthy owning KFCs and owning these restaurants—that’s the other flip side of this American dream. It wasn’t just the product he created for himself, but the wealthy spread, and by the way, the yummy chicken. The story of Colonel Sanders here on Our American Stories, folks. I you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do. We’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American Stories coming.

That’s Our American Stories dot.

Com, and we returned to Our American Stories.

Up next, a story from Zorro the Drummer.

He’s worked for musicians the likes of Lenny Kravitz, Frankie Valley, and Lisa Marie Presley. But before he was a renowned drummer, he was a poor kid from California named Daniel Donnelly. Let’s get into the story. Take it away, Zorro.

My life is very much like Forrest Gump. All the things that were not supposed to happen to Forrest happened. If you remember in the movie, you know, he’s in the White House with Elvis. All these amazing things to this kid—the unlikely kid—that was pretty much me. My mother, Maria, had the enormous task of raising seven children alone in the area known as Compton. So I was straight out of Compton. Like the rap song says, she was an immigrant; she actually came from an aristocratic family. She was the daughter of a Supreme Court justice. She had married my father about six months of age. He took the only car we had and abandoned us. So life was very difficult. We moved around a tremendous amount because we were getting evicted for either being late with the rent, and back in those days in the sixties, they could kick you out if you had too many people.

All that has changed now.

But my mother tried to hold down as many jobs as she could, but still wasn’t enough, so we struggled a lot just to make ends meet. In fact, there were times when we moved, when there was no money for a U-Haul or anything to move from one apartment to the next, so I would use literally my red Radio Flyer wagon, and we could load up furniture on there if you stack it a certain way, and me and my brothers would hoist it and haul it down the street a couple of miles to the next place. But at the same time, my mother had this incredible faith. She had this vision and dream, and something pretty amazing happened during the, like, when I was going into the second grade. Even though we were poor, she always dressed very dignified, and so she always carried herself as the person she grew up being in Mexico. So she never saw herself like that poor person. She carried herself in a different way even though we were poor. But she wore these scarves, and she always looked fabulous in these scarves, and inside of me was like a budding rock star (which I had no idea was there at the time), but there was this artistic flair about me. And I asked her if I could wear her orange silk scarf she was wearing. I asked her if I could wear it for my second grade school picture. And she looked down at me and she laughed and go, “Oh me! You can’t wear my scarf.” The boys will beat you up. This is not Mexico in the United States.

But I wanted to wear it really bad.

So I kept reasoning with her, and I said, “I don’t care what they think,” and said, “The scarf looks cool.” Elvis Presley wears one, Tom Jones wears one. I want to wear a scarf. I want to be different. And so she knelt down and tied her orange silk scarf around my neck and then she whispered in my ear. She says, “One day, my precious son, you will do something fantasmical with your life.” Fantasmical was the word she used. It was a mixture between fantastic and amazing and wonderful, and it was her own own word that she coined, but that’s how she truly felt. So I grew up in this household full of love, even though we were in abject poverty. And I think, during those years of being sort of heartbroken, because I remember trying to send letters to my father, he never responded to any of the letters or the report cards.

Of the pictures.

So I grew up with this incredible sense of rejection. It would have been different if he died or died in the war. Then I would just have to have dealt with this is no longer can be. But there was always this glimmer of hope inside this kid that something he would write or do or say would make his dad respond. And so he never did, and that sent a big spear of hurt, pain, and rejection in me, which became the fuel later for me doing what I ended up doing. Really, one great thing that happened during those days we lived in Compton was all of my brothers and sisters loved music, and so I grew up in a house where everyone was playing different records: all the great rock and roll records, soul music, and Motown jazz.

My mother loved big band and Mariachi.

And then I had the great fortune: a neighbor bought us some tickets, took me to go see Diana Ross and The Supremes and The Temptations when I was seven or eight years old, and I got so excited from the concert that the next day I just wanted to play drums. I was drawn to the rhythm, soul music. I didn’t own any drums, but I was creative, so I looked at my mother’s cupboard and found some Tupperware canisters and some salad spoons, and then looked at the trash cans and found, like, some Folgers coffee cans, all Monrovia cans. And I made a ghetto drum set, put it in my red Radio Flyer wagon, took it out on Compton Boulevard, turned on my transistor radio to Wolfman.

Jackett! How you doing?

Made away and call.

It brown, and put on soul music.

And then I just commenced pounding on the drums, and all the people around me were digging it and throwing coins into my wagon. Something sparked in me that day, and something came alive. That rhythm and that drummer thing was calling to me. We ended up moving to Grants Pass, Oregon. It’s beautiful up there. There are mos rivers, lakes, trees, and they hated us because my mother was Mexican. But this is fully the American dream. My mother was tired of renting and she had this dream of having a house one day. So we scrimped and saved, all of us worked and put a little tiny piece of down payment on a little plot of land out in the middle of nowhere in the country.

But we didn’t have any money for a dwelling.

We lived in our nineteen sixty-two Chevy Nova, which was hot as hell in the summer. No running water, no electricity, no outhouse. But I remember, for all the harsh people that we met, we met some godly Christian people as well. And there was a reverend. His name was a Reverend Ed Williamson. He is the one who let us shower at his house, and he also bought me and my brother’s shoes. We didn’t have the money to buy the shoes because we wanted to go on this church camping trip, so he bought us the shoes. That’s what allowed us to go to the summer church camp. And that’s actually the camp where I gave my heart to Jesus. So sometimes it takes just a pair of shoes to get a kid to find Jesus. And the most beautiful part of that story: I was in Grants Pass preaching at a church and doing some book signings, and that pastor showed up fifty years later, and we had this beautiful full-circle moment. And I’ve been tracking him down because I wanted him to know what I had done with my life and how many people I’ve affected because of the love of God he showed to me and my family.

So it was just the most beautiful thing.

But anyway, so in Grants Pass is where I officially wanted to be a drummer. So I entered a talent show. They were putting a band together, and I just told him that I was a drummer, even though I didn’t have any drums or had never played any drums other than the ghetto drum set on the streets.

And Compton, which was not a drum set.

So I conned my way into this band, and when we had the first rehearsal, they were like, “Hey, you know, where are your drums?” And I said, “They’re in the shop getting fixed.” But I could play with my hands on the back of the chair just to keep time for you guys. And so I faked my way through that until the day of the show, and which of course I wasn’t going to have the drums that hadn’t known any. We found a big, giant box. We ended up painting a drum set on it by hand with glitter and glue and all that stuff, and I ended up playing at the talent show on the box with my hands like I had been playing on the chair. The kids in the band were totally disappointed, but I just wanted to be in that talent show.

And kind of what.

Sparked that whole thing was watching Elvis Presley on the big televised satellite show he did called Elvis: Aloha from Hawaii. It was the world’s first satellite broadcast, broadcast all over the world. At the same time, I watched the drummer behind Elvis. His name was Ronnie Tutt, and when I saw him play, man, the guy looked like he was having so much fun. I’m like, “That’s what I want to do!” I want to do what that guy’s doing. But then it kind of went dead for a while because I didn’t get into school band, and so at that point I needed a new dream. And so, living in rural Oregon, everyone raised animals we couldn’t afford—like cows and horses and goats and stuff. So I decided I was going to raise chickens because they were really cheap to buy and they were small.

I wanted to be the world’s greatest chicken farmer.

Then I raised a couple of Saint Bernards, and then one of them got loose and destroyed my entire chicken farm in one day. And that’s what, sort of, God’s plan for my life. I needed a new dream, and so I thought about it. I’m like, “Man, music’s what I always really wanted to do, but I didn’t know how to get into it.”

I didn’t own any drums.

So, and you’ve been listening to the story of Zorro the Drummer. His mother, Maria, raised seven kids alone in Compton. But his mom’s incredible faith, well, it was always in evidence. When we return, more of Zorro the Drummer’s story here on Our American Stories. And we return to Our American Stories and the story of Daniel Donnelly, a.k.a. Zorro the Drummer. When we last left off, Daniel had set aside his dream of being a drummer because while he couldn’t afford a drum set, didn’t get into the high school band, and chickens were cheap. But he’d soon have a meeting with his school counselor that would change the course of his life. Let’s return to the story.

He said, “What do you like?” I said, “Music.” “Can you find me a job that puts me around music?” And he goes, “I’ll see what I can do.” A week later he comes back and he goes, “Man, I’m sorry, I couldn’t find anything like what you wanted, but I did find you a job.” And I’m like, “Well, what is it?” He goes, “Well, it’s a custodial position.” And I’m like, “Okay.” “Where?” He goes, “Right here, right where—right here?”

At the school, my school.

He goes, “Yeah,” “Oh, man, like an embarrassing job, like the school bell rings and all the kids are seeing you clean the toilets.” But he said, “Well, the good news is you get to clean the bandroom.” So I was like, “Wow, great!” I