2. Harland David Sanders
Born September 9, 1890
Henryville, Indiana, U.S.
December 16, 1980 (aged 90)
Died
Louisville, Kentucky, U.S.
Cause of death Pneumonia
Nationality American
Occupation Entrepreneur
Board member of Kentucky Fried Chicken (founder)
Religion Disciples of Christ
Josephine King (divorced)
Spouse(s)
Claudia Price
Harland David Sanders, Jr.
Children Margaret Sanders
Mildred Sanders Ruggles
Wilbur David Sanders
Parents
Margaret Ann Sanders (née Dunlevy)[1]

3. Early Life
Sanders was born on September 9, 1890 in a thin-walled, four room shack on
a country road three miles east of Henryville, Indiana. He was the oldest of
three children born to Wilbur David and Margaret Ann Sanders. Sanders was
of Irish descent.]
Sanders' father was a mild and affectionate man who tried to make a living as
a farmer, but fell and broke his back and a leg and had to give it up. For two
years he worked as a butcher in Henryville.] One afternoon in the summer of
1895 he came home with a fever and died later that day. Sanders' mother took
work in a tomato-canning factory, and the young Harland was required to
cook for his family.
Sanders dropped out of school when he was 12. When his mother remarried in
1902 his stepfather beat him. So then, with his mother's approval, he left
home to live with his uncle in Albany, Indiana.

4. Life before KFC
Sanders falsified his date of birth and enlisted in the United States
Army at the age of fifteen, completing his service commitment as a
mule handler in Cuba. He was honorably discharged after four months
and made his way to Sheffield, Alabama where an uncle lived. His
brother Clarence had also moved there, in order to avoid his stepfather.
During his early years, Sanders held many jobs, including being a
steamboat pilot, insurance salesman, railroad fireman, and farmer.
Sanders married Josephine King in 1908 and started a family, but after
his boss fired him for insubordination while he was on a trip, Josephine
stopped writing him letters. He then learned that Josephine had left
him, given away all their furniture and household goods, and taken the
children back to her parents’ home. Josephine’s brother wrote Sanders
a letter saying, "She had no business marrying a no-good fellow like you
who can’t hold a job." He had a son, Harland, Jr., who died at an early
age, and two daughters, Margaret Sanders and Mildred Sanders
Ruggles.

5. Career
In 1930 Sanders opened a service station in Corbin, Kentucky where
he cooked chicken dishes and other meals such as country ham and
steaks for customers. Since he did not have a restaurant, he served
customers in his adjacent living quarters. His local popularity grew
and Sanders moved to a motel with a 142 seat restaurant, later
designated the Harland Sanders Café and Museum. Over the next
nine years he developed his "Secret Recipe" for frying chicken in a
pressure fryer that cooked the chicken much faster than pan frying. In
1939 food critic Duncan Hines visited Sanders’s restaurant incognito
and was so impressed he listed the place in “Adventures in Good
Eating,” his famous guide to restaurants throughout the US. As his
success grew, Sanders played a more active role in civic life, including
joining the Rotary Club, the chamber of commerce, and the
Freemasons. In 1947, he and Josephine divorced and Sanders married
his secretary Claudia in 1949, as he had long desired. He was "re-
commissioned" as a Kentucky Colonel in 1949 by his friend, Governor
Lawrence Wetherby.
Around 1950, Sanders began developing his distinctive appearance,
growing his trademark mustache and goatee and donning a white
suit and string tie. He never wore anything else in public during the
last 20 years of his life, using a heavy wool suit in the winter and a
light cotton suit in the summer. He bleached his mustache and
goatee to match his white hair.

6. Life with KFC
At age 65, Sanders' store having failed due to the then new Interstate
75 reducing his restaurant's customer traffic, he took $105 from his
first Social Security check and began visiting potential franchisees.
The franchise approach was successful and in 1964 Sanders sold the
Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation for $2 million to a partnership of
Kentucky businessmen headed by John Y. Brown, Jr. The deal did not
include the Canadian operations. In 1965 Sanders moved to
Mississauga, Ontario to oversee his Canadian franchises and
continued to collect franchise and appearance fees both in Canada
and in the U.S. (He was active in Ontario even as he aged. For
example, his 80th birthday was held at the Inn on the Park in North
York, Ontario, hosted by Jerry Lewis as a Canadian Muscular
Dystrophy Association fundraiser.) In September 1970 he and his wife
were baptized in the Jordan River. He also befriended Billy Graham
and Jerry Falwell.
In 1973, he sued Heublein Inc. — the then parent company of Kentucky
Fried Chicken — over the alleged misuse of his image in promoting
products he had not helped develop. In 1975, Heublein Inc.
unsuccessfully sued Sanders for libel after he publicly described their
gravy as "wallpaper paste" to which "sludge" was added.

7. Sanders later used his stock holdings to create the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust and
Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization, which used the proceeds to aid
charities and fund scholarships. His trusts continue to donate money to groups like the
Trillium Health Care Centre; a wing of their building specializes in women's and children's
care and has been named after him.[17] The Sidney, British Columbia based foundation
granted over $1,000,000 in 2007, according to its 2007 tax return.[18]
Sanders died at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky of pneumonia on December
16, 1980.[19][20][21] He had been diagnosed with acute leukemia the previous June.[7] His
body lay in state in the rotunda of the Kentucky State Capitol in Frankfort after a funeral
service at the Southern Baptist Seminary Chapel, which was attended by more than
1,000 people. He was buried in his characteristic white suit and black western string tie in
Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville.
Since his death, Sanders has been portrayed by voice actors in Kentucky Fried Chicken
commercials in radio and an animated version of him has been used for television
commercials.
The Japanese Nippon Professional Baseball league has developed an urban legend of the
"Curse of the Colonel". A statue of Colonel Sanders was thrown into a river and lost during
a 1985 fan celebration, and (according to the legend) the "curse" has caused Japan's
Hanshin Tigers to perform poorly since the incident.[22]
A manuscript of a book on cooking, which Sanders apparently wrote in the mid-1960s,
has been found in KFC archives. It includes some cooking recipes from Sanders as well as
stories. KFC plans to try some of the recipes, and to offer the book online