Kemmons Wilson

"Entrepreneur Gives
Largest Single Gift to University"
The University of Memphis
Magazine
Spring 1999

Holiday Inns founder Kemmons Wilson is donating a $15 million building to The University of Memphis to house a new academic program.

The gift-the largest ever given to the institution-will create the Wilson School of Hotel and Restaurant Management at The U of M. It is the first time a gift of this nature has been incorporated into such a program.

Wilson, who did not complete high school, never had the opportunity to attend college. In announcing his gift, Wilson said, "I have adopted The University of Memphis as my university. The school will be the only one of its kind in the Southeast and will rival programs of a similar nature at such universities as Cornell, Purdue and Michigan State."

"Mr. Wilson's generosity will allow the University to initiate a program that we've wanted to establish for quite some time," said President V. Lane Rawlins.

"It's a natural component for The University of Memphis because of the high concentration of lodging industry leaders in this region. I know Gov. (Don) Sundquist and the Board of Regents join me in expressing our appreciation to Mr. Wilson and his family."

The four-story building will be built on the north side of Central Avenue near the intersection of Deloach and Central. The facility will function as a full-service hotel that will serve as a learning lab for students enrolled in the program. The building will feature meeting rooms, classrooms and banquet space for up to 800 people, and 80 suites with Internet access.

Students majoring in hospitality management will complete the University's general education requirement as well as basic business courses as part of the new curriculum. In addition to on-the-job training, those enrolling in the program will study restaurant and beverage management, human resources, real estate and time-share management.

Kemmons Wilson

Kemmons Wilson has been credited with revolutionizing the American hospitality industry with a chain of motels that grew out of a dismal 1951 family vacation. Now the founder of Holiday Inns is making possible a major addition to The University of Memphis with a $15 million gift for a campus hotel that will become the focal point for a school of hospitality and restaurant management.

"I just love to build, and I love to create," the 86-year-old Wilson once said about his many business endeavors since he retired from Holiday Inns.

Wilson has been building and creating businesses since he was a boy helping to support his widowed mother in Memphis. He bagged groceries, worked as a soda jerk and sold magazine subscriptions. After dropping out of high school he peddled popcorn at a movie house and plowed his profits into pinball and cigarette concessions, eventually becoming the nation's largest distributor of Wurlitzer jukeboxes.

He spent World War II as a pilot, flying ammunition and other critical supplies over "the Hump" the dangerous mountainous area between India and China, where weather and Japanese fighter planes took a terrible toll on American lives. After the war Wilson returned to Memphis to resume his business career, which by then was centered on home building.

Holiday Inns, so the story goes, grew out of Wilson's outrage that a seedy motel near Washington, D.C. charged him $2 for each of the five Wilson children in addition to $6 for him and his wife. He returned to Memphis determined to build a family motel where children would be welcome without extra charges.

Wilson built his first hotel on Summer Avenue in Memphis. Then, with friend and home-building colleague Wallace Johnson, he began a franchise program that resulted in more than 1,600 hotels within Holiday Inns' first 20 years. In 1979 Wilson stepped down as the company's chair, but he refused to go into retirement.

He has been involved in real estate, aviation, banking, nacho chip-manufacturing, a cemetery and a time-share resort, among other ventures.

He eventually returned to the business he probably knows best-hotels and motels. He began a new chain of budget-priced hotels, Wilson World, in 1989. Today Wilson operates more than 21 hotels.