Colonel Harland Sanders’ career exemplifies ‘perseverance’

For roughly half his life, Harland David Sanders of Henryville, Ind., was a poster child for the “school of hard knocks,” bouncing from place-to-place and from job-to-job.

Born into a poor farming family in 1890, Harland Sanders was 5 years old when his father died. His mother took a job working long hours at a tomato cannery, leaving young Harland to look after and cook for his two younger siblings.

(This “kitchen experience” would eventually become Harland Sanders’ ticket to fame and fortune as the legendary Colonel Sanders, but it was a long haul over a bumpy road.)

 

Harland’s mother remarried twice, and Harland had “a tumultuous relationship” with his second stepfather, causing Harland to leave home at age 13. He found work painting horse carriages before becoming a streetcar conductor.

In 1906, Harland Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the U.S. Army at age 16. He was deployed to Cuba as a participant in the Second Intervention and assigned as a wagoner, delivering supplies to American troops.

After being honorably discharged in 1907, Harland relocated to Jasper, Ala., where he found work as a blacksmith’s helper in the Southern Railway workshops. He progressed to cleaning out the ash pans of locomotives and was soon promoted to fireman (steam engine stoker).

He was dismissed from the railroad for “insubordination,” which would become a somewhat common occurrence for Harland, who had a reputation for bullheadedness.

 Switching gears, Harland studied law by correspondence and began to perform legal duties in justice-of-the-peace courts in Arkansas. That job lasted until Harland got into a fistfight with one of his clients while court was in session.

 

Later, Harland tried working other jobs, such as selling life insurance, selling automobile tires, running a local chamber of commerce and delivering babies as a male midwife. He went on to establish a profitable ferry boat company, transporting people and cargo across the Ohio River between Jeffersonville, Ind., and Louisville, Ky.

In 1930, the Shell Oil Company offered Harland a job running a service station in Corbin, Ky. He could live in the back of the building rent-free, in return for paying the company a percentage of sales. America was in the grips of the Great Depression.

Harland Sanders was grateful for the opportunity, and to embellish his business, he had the bright idea to prepare and serve simple country dishes that would feed hungry truck drivers. They would gather around the dinner table in the Sanders family living quarters.

His specialty was country ham and steaks. (Pan-fried chicken was not on the original menu because it took too long to prepare.)

Word spread around town, and more people started coming to Sanders’ Shell gas station just for the food. Harland moved his food service operation across the street in 1935, taking over a motel and restaurant in Corbin in order to seat more diners.

So, now, at age 45, Harland Sanders had found finally his niche in the food service industry. (It was the midway point in his life. Harland Sanders died in 1980 at age 90.)

One of the regular customers who frequented Sanders Café in Corbin was Kentucky Gov. Ruby Laffoon (shown below). He commissioned Harland Sanders as a “Kentucky Colonel” in 1935.

 

This endorsement set the wheels in motion for “Colonel Harland Sanders” to establish a fast-food empire that spanned the globe – Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC.

A major steppingstone in that whole endeavor was Sanders’ second restaurant, which he opened in 1939 and purposefully located in Buncombe County, N.C., a few miles north of Asheville, to attract the tourist trade.