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John Y. Brown Jr., a born salesman who grew to become a multimillionaire by reworking Kentucky Fried Hen into a worldwide model after which bought himself to voters in a six-week TV blitz to develop into Kentucky’s governor, serving one time period, died on Tuesday in Lexington, Ky. He was 88.
His household stated the demise, in a hospital, was brought on by problems of Covid-19
Mr. Brown, a 30-year-old lawyer on the time, and a fellow investor purchased Kentucky Fried Hen from its founder, Harlan Sanders, for $2 million in 1964 (about $19.3 million at this time). Over the subsequent seven years he reworked a nationwide string of about 600 eating places into one of many world’s largest fast-food chains, with some 3,000 red-and-white-striped takeout retailers.
He bought the enterprise in 1971 to Heublein Inc., the distiller, for a private revenue estimated at greater than $30 million (about $225 million at this time).
A prodigious Democratic fund-raiser, Mr. Brown, a son of a former Kentucky congressman and state legislator, initially flirted with a political profession, contemplating a run for america Senate earlier than deciding in opposition to it on the final minute after which gauging a bid for governor in 1975 earlier than once more declining to hitch the race.
In 1979, nonetheless, not too long ago wed to Phyllis George, a pioneering sportscaster and former Miss America, Mr. Brown plunged right into a six-week tv marketing campaign for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and defeated a number of candidates by a plurality of slightly below 30 %. He then simply defeated Louie B. Nunn, a former Republican governor, that November.
Hobbled by a recession, Mr. Brown compiled a combined report because the state’s chief govt. Casting himself as “the maker of coverage and supervisor of funds,” he sought to draw funding by selling “Kentucky & Co.” as “the state that’s run like a enterprise.” However to maintain the state solvent, he needed to shrink the federal government payroll by hundreds of workers whereas making an attempt to keep away from main reductions in providers.
“He was a sound steward of the commonwealth’s sources, however he was not a frontrunner who proposed new applications in areas resembling training or human sources,” Mary Ok. Bonsteel Tachau and Bruce L. McClure wrote in “Kentucky’s Governors” (1985).
After finishing his time period in December 1983, Mr. Brown entered Kentucky’s 1984 Democratic major for a U.S. Senate seat however withdrew six weeks later, citing the lingering results of life-threatening heart-bypass surgical procedure he had undergone in his final 12 months in workplace as governor. In 1987, he sought the gubernatorial nomination once more however got here in second within the Democratic major. By then, his luster as a possible nationwide candidate had light.
His profession as an investor had continued after his buy of Kentucky Fried Hen. In 1969, he purchased a controlling curiosity within the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Affiliation. The group gained the league championship in 1975 however folded when the A.B.A. merged with the Nationwide Basketball Affiliation the subsequent 12 months. Mr. Brown then purchased a half curiosity within the Buffalo Braves of the N.B.A., a former enlargement group.
However when he was blocked from shifting the Braves to Louisville, Ky., Mr. Brown and a accomplice made a cope with the Boston Celtics possession to swap the groups. (The brand new house owners quickly moved the Braves to San Diego and later Los Angeles because the Clippers.) In Boston, Mr. Brown alienated loyalists by buying and selling away common gamers earlier than promoting the group in 1979.
He additionally based a roasted-chicken restaurant chain with the nation music star Kenny Rogers, calling it Kenny Rogers Roasters. It grew to 350 retailers, however competitors from Kentucky Fried Hen, by then generally known as KFC, and the Boston Hen chain (later generally known as Boston Market) drove it out of business in 1998. (It was later purchased by Nathan’s Well-known.)
John Younger Brown Jr. was born in Lexington on Dec. 28, 1933. John Sr. was a trial lawyer who served one time period within the U.S. Home of Representatives within the mid-Nineteen Thirties and was a member of the Kentucky Home of Representatives for a number of a long time. He misplaced perennial races for governor and the U.S. Senate — losses that haunted his son and which John Jr. later blamed on machine politicians whose help his father had spurned. His mom was Dorothy (Inman) Brown.
He earned a bachelor’s diploma in 1957 and a legislation diploma in 1960, each from the College of Kentucky, and served within the Military Reserve from 1959 to 1965.
Entrepreneurial by intuition, in highschool Mr. Brown had made as much as $1,000 a month in commissions in a summer time job peddling vacuum cleaners, and as a lot as $25,000 a 12 months promoting the Encyclopaedia Britannica throughout legislation college.
He was additionally a high-stakes gambler, a behavior that rivals would wield in opposition to him. He was investigated for failing to make a compulsory report of a $1.3 million money withdrawal from one in all his financial institution accounts, though he was by no means charged with wrongdoing.
Mr. Brown’s first marriage, to Eleanor Durall, who was generally known as Ellie, led to divorce. In 1973, named chairwoman of the Kentucky Colonels after she purchased a majority of the group’s inventory, she grew to become the primary lady to go a significant skilled basketball group.
His marriage to Ms. George, in 1979, additionally led to divorce, in 1998. She died of a uncommon blood most cancers in 2020 at 70 after an extended profession as a CBS sportscaster, during which she shattered a barrier in 1975 by becoming a member of the all-male forged of this system “The NFL In the present day.”
His third marriage, to Jill Louise Roach, a former Mrs. Kentucky, led to divorce in 2003.
Mr. Brown is survived by three kids from his first marriage, Sissy Brown, Sandra Brown Steier and John Y. Brown III, who served as Kentucky’s secretary of state within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s; and two kids from his marriage to Ms. George, Lincoln Tyler George Brown and Pamela Brown, a senior Washington correspondent and weekend anchor for CNN.
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