John Willard Marriott, Sr.
Autobiography - 1980

On September 17, 1900, on a small farm in Marriott, Utah, I, John Willard Marriott, was the first son born to Hyrum Willard and Ellen Morris Marriott. A few years later, the family moved to the lower part of Marriott and bought a 100-acre farm that had been utilized for the pasturing of racehorses. My father, Hyrum, developed the land into a stock raising farm. He bought sheep and cattle in the fall and then fattened them up on pulp from the local sugar factory and corn silage from the farm.

I was the eldest son and played an important role in t:he operation of the farm. After school and on week-ends, I would work with the cattle and sheep and also on the farm where we raised hay and sugar beets. In the summertime my father would drive the cattle to "Snow Basin," a beautiful basin of six sections over the mountains east of Ogden. We would drive the sheep to South Fork 25 miles east of Ogden where they would graze for the summer on Rattlesnake Mountain.

During the summer vacations, I would stay with the Basque sheep herders and tend camp. All pack outfits slept in teepee=s which was great for a boy--riding horses, catching rainbow trout in the streams, shooting grouse, and shooting bears, too, because they killed the sheep. I really looked forward to this life. I learned to make sour dough bread, Mulligan stew, to kill and dress a lamb for lamb stew and chops. This outdoor life in the mountains I never forgot. All during my life I have emphasized the value of hard work, good habits, and a religious life. Work and prayer is the route to success.

When I was fourteen, my father sent me to San Francisco with a trainload of sheep. During the first day, every time the freight train stopped, I had to get out of the caboose and poke the sheep because they all would jam into one end of the car and suffocate. While in San Francisco, I had the opportunity of seeing the 1915 World's Exposition and had my picture taken in my first pair of long pants.

The following year my father again sent me out with a train­load of sheep--this time to Omaha. At that time, the railroad had a regulation that no one under eighteen years could ride on a freight train. When I reached Cheyenne, the conductor decided that I was too young, so he put me off the train. I caught the next passenger train to Omaha while my sheep traveled on without me. When I arrived in the Omaha stockyards, I found that my sheep were there, but the question was where. The sheep had been turned into the pens, mixing with other sheep. Since the Marriott sheep had mixed brands on them, it was almost impossible to determine which sheep belonged to which rancher. The only thing I could do was sit on the fence and pick out the biggest ones because Utah sheep were larger than Texas lambs.

I attended school through the sixth grade at Marriott and Slaterville Schools. After graduation, I enrolled in Weber Academy, the LDS church school in Ogden. My high school years were continuously broken up because I often would have to stay out of school in order to help with lambing in the spring, feeding the cattle and sheep, or harvesting sugar beets in the fall.

I was ordained a deacon in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at the age of twelve and at 15 I was made a priest. I participated fully in the life of the Church, teaching and sometimes teaming up with my sister to sing duets in meetings.

When I just turned nineteen I went on a mission to the Eastern States. For two years, I served as a missionary in Vermont and Connecticut, strengthening my own convictions and extending my formal education. During this time, my companions and I formed many friendships, witnessed healings and encountered some strong opposition to the Church. At one time in northern
Vermont while traveling without purse or scrip, we were pelted with rotten apples and chased out town.

In 1921 I returned to Utah from the mission in time to, enroll in Weber College. I took college courses without a high school diploma. President Aaron W. Tracy of the college gave me responsibility for running the book store, managing the Weber Herald and getting ads for the Acorn and the Herald. I was also elected the first president of the Weber College Student Body.

Due to financial reverses that my father suffered in 1919 and 1920, I had to completely support myself. During the summers, I worked for the Baron Woolen Mills, selling woolen goods, men's suits, overcoats and ladies' lingerie, dresses, etc. I was so successful that I was made district supervisor and had as many as 45 salesmen working for me in seven Western states. I sold in lumber camps of California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

In 1924 I entered the University of Utah. The next year I stayed out of school going to Nevada for my father to trail a herd of sheep from the Nevada desert to northern Utah. There the sheep were lambed and driven to the mountains for the summer. It was a rugged winter, and the only company I had were Spanish speaking Basques and Mexicans. But the lack of companionship afforded me the opportunity to do an extensive amount of reading.

In 1925, I returned to the University and graduated in the spring of 1926 with an A.B. degree. That fall, I secured a position as Secretary and Treasurer of Weber College under Aaron Tracy, in addition to teaching classes in Theology and English. I also had charge of the Little Theatre that winter. I brought an actor from New York and Edgar Rice Burroughs' daughter from San Francisco to be the leads in a number of plays.

I was looking for an opportunity to go into business for myself. A & W Root Beer drive-ins were a big success in Salt Lake City, so I bought the franchise for Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond for $2,000.

In March of 1927, I arrived in Washington and looked up two of my friends from college, Hugh Colton and Roland Parry. Hugh became interested in my adventure and invested 50%, thus becoming a partner in the new business. I located a site for the first store-­14th and Kenyon Streets, a new shopping suburb in the northwest part of town. The store was one-third of a bake shop with only 8-1/2 feet of frontage. We put a big orange A & W barrel in the window, added a counter, root beer equipment, and sawdust on the floor. Our first promotion was free root beer tickets passed out to auto­mobile riders at red lights. We also gave a free small glass of' root beer to children. The shop was opened the same day Lindbergh flew the Atlantic. Later I met Lindbergh at the White House and told him we had something in common--that we went into business on the same day.

As soon as the business was opened, I returned to Utah to marry my college sweetheart, Alice Taylor Sheets, the day after she graduated from the University of Utah at the age of 19. We left immediately for Washington, D. C., in our A Model-T Ford and spent eleven days on muddy roads in a slow 35-mile-per-hour car.

When we arrived in Washington, we rented a small apartment in the Boulevard apartment house on New York Avenue where the State Department is now located. After we were settled in, Alice pitched in and helped with the business. But as the warm weather waned, the root beer business declined. In order to survive, Allie and I turned to serving hot tamales, chili con carne, and barbecue. At the suggestion of a customer, we called our new store The Hot Shoppes.

The spring of 1928 saw serious discussions between my partner and me as to the continuance of the business. There simply was not enough business nor enough profit being generated for the two of us to remain. It was finally agreed that I would continue with the business, so I borrowed $5,000 from the Park Savings Bank across the street from the Shoppe to buy Hugh out. Hugh had graduated from the George Washington University Law School and wanted. to go West to ranch and to practice law. He remained a life-long friend and his son Sterling became the chief legal counsel for the Marriott Corporation with 20 lawyers working for him.

Another downtown store was opened the first summer and in 1928 about the first drive-in curb service restaurant in America was opened on Georgia Avenue, a main thoroughfare between Baltimore and Washington. It was painted bright orange with black and orange shingles. in the fall it was enclosed with windows and we served hot tamales, chili, barbecue, hot dogs, root beer, and milk shakes.

Despite the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting depression, our business continued to grow and expand. A fourth Hot Shoppe was added in 1929 and we built the first Hot Shoppe out­side of Washington, D. C. in 1932 in Baltimore. Allie temporarily retired in 1932 to add a son, John Willard Marriott, Jr., to the family. It was not long, however, before she was back working as decorator and checking locations and a multitude of odd jobs needed in the development of new locations and entry into the real restaurant drive-in business. I continued at a frenetic pace running and developing the restaurant business in a big way, and in 1934 became desperately ill.

Five doctors told me I had Hodgkin's Disease and had six to twelve months to live. I was told to get my affairs in order and then take a vacation, which is exactly what I did. Allie and I went to Virginia Beach and then to Maine, coming home after two months some­what rested. I was terribly depressed, however, and asked two prominent LDS friends to administer to me. They promised I would live. After a year, the doctors examined me and could find no trace of the illness. I returned to work determined to build a successful company.

By this time my brother Paul had come to help me and later brothers Russell and Woodrow, both of whom had graduated from the University of Utah, married, and had been on missions.

In 1937 we provided the first meals to airline passengers at Hoover Airport in Washington and thus began what is today the largest airline catering operation in the world.

In 1939, despite threats of war in Europe, Allie and I were happy with our business and our family but greatly concerned about the coming war. On January 9th, Allie gave birth to another son Richard Edwin.

During the war no expansion was possible. Paul and Russell joined the Navy, Woodrow had ulcers, and I was too old for the draft and was the head of an essential business. Later I became involved in many civic organizations and was elected president of the National Restaurant Association in 1949. The convention was held in Atlantic City.

During the war, rationing was imposed, employees were drafted, the gasoline shortage affected driving, but the Hot Shoppes were all in neighborhood areas so were not affected much. We discontinued for the duration of the war, curb service, however, and entered the cafeteria business.

In June of 1943, we added another phase of the business — the catering of government installations, the forerunner of the present-day business and industry food service division of the company.

In 1953, Marriott Hot Shoppes stock was first issued for public sale (in 1967 the name of the company was changed to the Marriott Corporation). I hired a financial man, a friend, Milton Barlow, with a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Harvard. "Milt" as he was called, was a strong, hard working, capable executive and became a real force in the development and growth of the business together with my brothers and Allie.

Through the forties and fifties, the Hot Shoppes grew, significantly, but there was another area to be developed and in 1957 we opened our first hotel, the Twin Bridges Marriott, across the road from the giant Pentagon. Since then more than seventy hotels and inns have been built throughout the world, establishing the Marriott name as a byword for quality and service of exceptional standards.

In 1964, Bill Marriott, Jr. assumed the presidency of the company, and I became chairman of the board.

My church and my positions in my church have been most important in my life. I have counted as friends five Presidents of the LDS Church, and I had the honor to serve for ten years as the President of the Washington, D. C. Stake.

Outside of my own business, I have served as a director of the American Motors Company, the Acacia Mutual Life Insurance Company, Riggs National Bank of Washington, D. C., and the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Washington. The University of Utah, Brigham Young University, and Weber State College have awarded me honorary doctorate degrees.

President Eisenhower and Mamie were great friends of ours. Ike invited Allie and me to many affairs at the White House.

In 1968, President-elect Richard Nixon selected me to be his chairman of the 1969 Inaugural Committee. We organized a. staff of 3,000 (mostly volunteers) to develop the parade and balls ceremonies, and I am proud to say that I won plaudits for accomplishing the most successful, financially and artistically, inaugural in recent history. With President Nixon's re-election in 1972, I again chaired the Inaugural of 1973 and rode at the head of the parade with Allie and we sat in the White House box with President and Mrs. Nixon.

In 1970 Billy Graham, Bob Hope, and Hobart Lewis, president of the Readers Digest, asked me to be chairman of the Honor America Committee. It was a year of marches on Washington, riots at universities around the country; hippies and dissidents were tearing up the flag, denouncing America. The truth about America's greatness had to be told.

The Committee organized a big rally in Washington on the Fourth of July 1970. Billy Graham held a meeting in front of the Lincoln Memorial in the morning with 60,000 people. At night, 450,000 people (the largest crowd ever to visit Washington until this day--May 1980) gathered for Bob Hope's show and the fireworks. Bob Hope brought 300 actors and actresses from across the country to put on a fabulous show on the grounds of the Washington Monument. It was carried by national network television.

This patriotic celebration was the turning point in America. People began talking about America's greatness — Nixon was bringing the war in Southeast Asia to a close, and our boys would soon come home from a most disastrous war. One unfortunate episode of this war occurred in 1968 when I was chairman of a group to elect George Romney for President of the United States. George was the front runner in the polls, but he visited Vietnam and made a speech when he returned saying that he had been "brain­washed" by the generals there. This lost him the election. I had worked so hard for George and at the same time in my business, that I had a heart attack. But I survived, just as I did from the hepatitis in 1950 when I almost died.

But the business expansion of the seventies was too much. The company acquired Big Boy, a national drive-in restaurant company; three cruise ships in Athens that cruise the Mediterranean in summer and the Caribbean in the winter; many big hotels and restaurants; and by the end of the seventies, restaurant units alone numbered a thousand. In the midst of all this I had four heart attacks — in New Hampshire at my summer home, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, and at home in Washington. While in the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and near death, President Spencer W. Kimball, a close friend, called Allie and told her that the First Presidency had a prayer circle and prayed for me, and he wanted Allie to tell me that I was going to live. To the amazement of the doctors for the second time in my life, the Lord decided I should stay a while longer.

This illness curtailed my activities somewhat, but I continued as chairman of the Board of the Marriott Corporation. My son Bill was developing a great organization and expanding the business on the base I had provided. The company had an A rating with insurance companies and banks so that financing for a two- or three-billion-dollar business was available. The company had the best reputation in the business and at this writing (1980) it is considered the most profitable and well operated hotel business in the industry.

I have spent 53 years with the business, and whenever I visit the hotels and other operations, it is a joy to be received at every meeting by the thousands of employees with standing ovations. By this time, there are 70,000 employees. The morale in the company is so good because of fair treatment and profit sharing that there are no unions.

Allie and I have homes in Washington, New Hampshire on beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee where both sons have homes and also at a beautiful 4200-acre farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, sixty miles west of Washington, and at Camelback Inn in Arizona where I have my office a few months in the winter.

Allie's and my greatest assets are the Church and our family. Bill and Dick each have four children. Bill is first counselor in the Washington Stake, and his three fine sons and one beautiful daughter are active and good members. His lovely wife is Donna Garff Marriott. Dick has four beautiful girls, all talented, trained by a very efficient and wonderful mother, Nancy Peery Marriott. They all live in nearby Maryland and it is a great joy for Allie and me to visit with them all and see them grow and develop into good, well educated, industrious Latter-Day Saints.

We love Fairfield Farm and Fiery Run Ranch, with its horses, Hereford cattle and black-faced sheep, its beautiful green rolling hills and springs and streams. Allie and I both love New Hampshire, a most beautiful spot where we can visit with all the family each summer. My greatest love is still the Church and the opportunity to be a sealer in the temple and to perform marriages, also to represent the Church with the Chief of Chaplains of the Army, Navy and Air Force as the endorsing agent for LDS chaplains. This has been my job commencing with World War II. My great fortune has been an understanding wife, a most wonderful woman who has loved me through fifty-three years of marital bliss — always with me through thick and thin. The Lord gave me this lovely companion and to Him I am grateful for all that I am and have.