Wallace johnson holiday inn biography of michael

Wallace E. Johnson, co-founder of the Holiday Inns hotel chain, with Kemmons Wilson Jr., died of a heart attack Wednesday in Memphis, where he lived..

The Holiday Inn name was born in when founders Wallace E. Johnson and Kemmons Wilson opened a hotel in Memphis.

Holiday Inn leaders scout new project / Wallace E. Johnson (left), president, and Kemmons Wilson, chairman of the board of Holiday Inns of.

Wallace E. Johnson, co-founder of the Holiday Inns hotel chain, with Kemmons Wilson Jr., died of a heart attack Wednesday in Memphis, where he lived.

Johnson Jr. (–), American businessman; Victor S. Johnson Sr. (–), American businessman; Wallace E. Johnson (–), co-founder of Holiday.

In late , Wilson called on an acquaintance of his, a fellow Memphis area builder named Wallace E. Johnson, “the biggest thinking man I knew”.

Kemmons Wilson, who changed hotel industry, dies at 90

Kemmons Wilson, a business visionary who founded the Holiday Inn hotel chain in 1952 and reshaped roadside lodging by offering inexpensive but comfortable rooms where children stay for free, died Wednesday at his home in Memphis, Tenn.

The cause of death was not reported.

Mr. Wilson, 90, was a folksy, dynamic and humble workaholic who answered his own phone, rarely traveled with an image-shaping entourage and could be found doing landscaping work around his hotels.

He routinely put in 12-hour days and ran business ventures nationwide, from shopping centers to oil refineries to catfish and bullfrog farms.

At the center of his career was Holiday Inn, which now has more than 1,000 hotels in the United States.

The only child of a poor widow, Mr. Wilson was a high-school dropout who at the age of 17 started selling popcorn in a Memphis theater lobby to help support his mother.

He parlayed his profits into a Wurlitzer jukebox fran