Dave Thomas: formed at the Hobby House

1947, the Fort Wayne years

The claim, at full size: Dave Thomas was born Rex David Thomas on 2 July 1932 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, adopted at six weeks, and raised in a family that moved wherever work was. Wendy's was founded in Columbus, Ohio. But the man Wendy's was founded by was formed in Fort Wayne, and the formation is documented to the level of the room he slept in. In 1947 the family landed in Fort Wayne and the fifteen year old took a job as a busboy at the Hobby House restaurant. When the family prepared to move again, Thomas made the decision his whole later life was built on: he stayed. He moved into the Fort Wayne YMCA, dropped out of school after the tenth grade, and worked at the Hobby House full time, the dropout decision he would call, for the rest of his life and in a national campaign of penance that ended with a GED in 1993, his greatest mistake.

The making: The Hobby House was his university. Its owner, Phil Clauss, became his mentor; its waitress Lorraine Buskirk became his wife, married in Fort Wayne on 21 May 1954; and after Army service as a cook in Germany he came straight back to its kitchen and rose toward management. Then, in the mid-1950s, Colonel Harland Sanders came through Fort Wayne looking for established restaurateurs to take Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises. The Clauss family franchised, and the Hobby House cook became the Colonel's protege, the man Sanders trusted with the chicken's consistency from store to store. In the early 1960s Clauss sent him to Columbus to rescue four failing KFC restaurants, on a promise of a share if he saved them. He saved them, sold them back, and was a millionaire at thirty-five.

What it became: On 15 November 1969 Thomas opened the first Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers in Columbus and named it for his daughter Melinda, called Wendy. The chain grew into the third great hamburger empire of the world, and Thomas, in his apron, became one of the most recognized businessmen in America, a face on television for thirteen years. He died on 8 January 2002. His full entry stands in the people record, and Fort Wayne's own restaurant history carries the Hobby House in its place. This section's claim is the formation, stated exactly: before the Colonel, before Columbus, before Wendy's, there was a fifteen year old alone at the YMCA in Fort Wayne, washing dishes in the restaurant that taught him the business he would remake.

Sources:

1. Encyclopedia.com, Thomas, Dave (the 1947 move to Fort Wayne; the Hobby House busboy job; staying on alone at the YMCA; the marriage to Lorraine Buskirk at the Hobby House, 21 May 1954; the Clauss proposal and the Columbus turnaround; the first Wendy's, 1969).
2. Horatio Alger Association, R. David Thomas member profile (the Fort Wayne hiring; the return to the Hobby House after Army service; the 1956 KFC franchise and the Sanders relationship; the first Wendy's, 15 November 1969).