July 21. Kemmons Wilson. Kemmons was already a movie-theatre-owning millionaire when he took his wife and 5 little children to the capital for a family vacation. They stayed in a $6-a-night motel room, which was not only dingy and cramped, but its price zoomed to $16-a-night as soon as the motel owner saw the kids. Wilson told his wife it wasn’t fair, and within a year, he opened his own motel in Memphis and named it Holiday Inn—after the Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire Christmas flick.
In Kemmons’s motels, children stayed free, rooms had air conditioning, and most of his motels had restaurants and swimming pools. In 1972, the chain became the first to generate revenue of $1 billion, with more than 1400 branches across the world. Let’s look at how Kemmons got started.
If you want to move forward, make friends, establish trust, and keep both.
Seventeen-year-old Kemmons barely glanced at the Memphis streetcar. It took longer to walk to town, but Kemmons didn’t have the seven cents required to ride.
It didn’t matter. Kemmons knew how to pinch every ounce of copper out of every penny earned. Even when he found work, he wouldn’t ride the streetcar. When he quit school, his mother wasn’t happy. But she couldn’t stop him.
He figured it was more important to eat than to get an education.
Heck, the Great Depression had wealthy men sweeping leaves. Maybe hardship was new to them, but not to him.
To help his single mother, he had started working when he was five. At the memory, he grinned. He had gotten paid to ride in the back of a truck next to an old piano. His job was to sing “Over There” to raise money for war bonds. He wasn’t sure he had even sung on pitch.
After that, he had plenty of jobs. Still, yesterday’s news had hit hard. His mother had lost her bookkeeping job. Kemmons sucked in a determined breath. He didn’t know how, but he would support them. And they would never be poor again.
When Kemmons finally reached town and looked for work, a brokerage firm offered him $12 a week to write the latest stock prices on a board. He took it—but wanted better.
Staying after work, he learned the bookkeeper’s job because the bookkeeper made $35 a week. When that guy left, the firm gave Kemmons the job—but they only paid him $15 a week. Kemmons quit. Never again would he work for someone else.
But now what? Kemmons thought about one of his favorite places—the Memphian Theater. They didn’t offer the movie-goers any snacks. So he talked to the manager, and the manager talked to the owner. They agreed Kemmons could put a popcorn machine out front.
But popcorn machines were $50, and Kemmons had no money. He asked the man who sold the machine if he could pay a dollar a week until he paid it off.
“Son, you look like an honest young man,” he said. “I’m gonna sell it to you.”
Kemmons would live up to the proprietor’s trust. If he was going anywhere, he needed to make friends, establish trust, and keep both.
Soon, Kemmons, who sold popcorn for a nickel a bag, had a success. But it wasn’t long until his profits exceeded the theatre manager’s salary, and the manager took the job away from him.
Kemmons told his mother, “I’m going to get myself a movie theater. Nobody else will ever take my popcorn machine away from me.”
Kemmons sold his popcorn machine to the theater manager and used the money to buy 5 pinball machines for $10 each. He found the best locations for them and hustled like mad. His next successful business venture was born.
A few years later Kemmons bought his first movie theater. Over his lifetime, he would own eleven.
When Kemmons had the biggest idea of his lifetime—building the Holiday Inn chain—he again looked for the right person to help him. He chose Wallace Johnson. Their life-long partnership was founded on relationship with God and each other, hard work, and trust. When one needed something, the other was there.
“When we have learned not to give up, it shows we have stood the test. When we have stood the test, it gives us hope” (Romans 5:4 NLV).
By 1965, there were 661 Holiday Inns. The business they created together produced a new job every 56 minutes and a new room every 29 minutes. Following in the tradition of the Gideons, Kemmons and Wallace saw that each room offered its readers spiritual refreshment along with a good night’s sleep. They put a Bible in each room.
“If Wallace gets to heaven before I do,” said Kemmons, “I’m going to go to the Pearly Gates and ask Saint Peter to give me Wallace as my partner for eternity.”
What relationships can you establish and keep in your success journey? If you want to move forward, make friends, establish trust, and keep both.
Wilson, Kemmons and Kerr, Robert. Half Luck and Half Brains: The Kemmons Wilson Holiday Inn Story. USA: Hambleton-Hill Publishing, Inc., 1996.
Hendricks, Nancy. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. “Charles Kemmons Wilson (19132003).” Updated December 21, 2017. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/charles-kemmons-wilson-2765.
Kemmons Wilson Family Foundation. “Our Story.” Accessed June 10, 2020. http://www.kwff.org/our-story.
Story read by: Chuck Stecker
Introduction read by: Daniel Carpenter
Audio production: Joel Carpenter
Editor: Teresa Crumpton, https://authorspark.org/
Project manager: Blake Mattocks
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