Herman Warden Lay (March 6, 1909 – December 6, 1982) was an Americans 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.[ Charlotte Mecklenburg Library ]
Early life
Lay was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on March 6, 1909.
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.
By 1920, they moved to Greenville, South Carolina.
In 1922 his mother died of
cancer and his father remarried.
He then attended Furman University on an athletic scholarship for two years, but did not graduate.
Career
He began his career at Sunshine Biscuits and was laid off because of the
Great Depression.
[ The Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies ][Dirk E. Burhans, Crunch!: A History of the Great American Potato Chip, Terrace Books, 2008, p. 40 [3]] 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.
[ Frito Lay history] 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.
[ Happy 50th anniversary, Frito-Lay -- PEPline looks back at FLNA's history , Pesico Press release, September 29, 2011][ Texas State Historical Association] He peddled potato chips from Atlanta to Nashville, Tennessee.
[Lovedeep Kaur, Advances in Potato Chemistry and Technology, Academic Press, 2009, p. 28 [7]] 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.[ The Wall Street Journal, Dallas] 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.[ PepsiCo, Our history ]
A philanthropist, he helped found the Association of Private Enterprise Education (APEE).
Personal life
Lay married Sarah Amelia "Mimi" Harper
and had four children.
He died at the age of 73 on December 6, 1982.
His late son, Herman Warden Lay Jr., was a Dallas-based co-founder of a bottling company in
Mexico for
Pepsi and 7 Up.
Legacy
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has a room named after him.
[ U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Meeting Space] His alma mater, Furman University, offers a scholarship in his name.
[ Furman University scholarships]
The Furman University Herman W. Lay Physical Activities Center is named after him.
[ Physical Activities Center Furman University.]
The Lay Ornamental Garden in the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden is named after him.
In 1975, Lay received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
External links
