John Y. Brown Jr. obit

 

John Y. Brown Jr., Former Kentucky Governor and KFC Owner, Dies at 88

Brown had owned three professional basketball teams, including the Boston Celtics.

 He was not on the list.

John Y. Brown Jr., who became Kentucky’s governor after building empires in business and sports, has died. He was 88.

Brown’s family said in a release Tuesday that “every day was an exciting adventure” for the former Democratic governor, who served from 1979 to 1983.

“He was a true Kentucky original who beamed with pride for his home state and its people,” the family said. “He had many prominent accomplishments, but most of all he loved his family with all of his heart, and we in turn loved him with all of our hearts.”

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Brown was a “remarkable leader who was committed to serving the people of Kentucky.” He died in his hometown of Lexington. Among his children are news anchor Pamela Ashley Brown and former Secretary of State of Kentucky John Young Brown III.

Brown had been a leading Democratic fundraiser in the 1970s by the time he made his own run for public office. He also acquired an international reputation as a master salesman. Kentucky Fried Chicken was a string of small-town restaurants before Brown turned it into a global enterprise and a household name. He also had owned three professional basketball teams, including the Boston Celtics.

In the spring of 1979, newly married to TV celebrity and former Miss America Phyllis George, Brown swooped back into his home state and entered the Democratic primary for governor. With his personal fortune, Brown unleashed a six-week campaign that made heavy use of television. He squeaked by a comparatively colorless field of candidates to win the nomination, then defeated Republican Louie B. Nunn, a former governor, in the general election.

Brown had the bad luck to take office as a recession was tightening its grip and tax revenues were dropping. He got high marks for keeping the state solvent, but thousands of state employees lost their jobs, and they took it out on Brown in his two future races.

In 1964, Brown purchased Kentucky Fried Chicken from Harland Sanders for $2 million. He became president of KFC in January 1965 and sold it to Heublein Corp. in a $275 million stock swap in 1971. Brown received nearly $21 million in Heublein stock for his KFC shares.He continued to invest in business ventures, the most high profile of which was Kenny Rogers Roasters, a wood-roasted chicken restaurant he founded with country music star Kenny Rogers.

In 1969, Brown purchased controlling interest in the Kentucky Colonels, a Louisville franchise in the American Basketball Association. After the ABA folded, Brown paid a reported $1 million for half interest in the Buffalo Braves of the National Basketball Association. He wanted to move the Braves to Louisville but was blocked in court. Brown and a partner then swapped the Braves for the Boston Celtics, in the first trade of professional sports teams.

The Braves later moved to San Diego, and Brown later sold his share of the Celtics.

In 1983, Brown had the first of his heart bypass surgeries. He was heavily sedated for a week and breathed with the aid of a respirator. Two months later, having sworn to give up cigarettes and lose weight, Brown told reporters his brush with death had made him a new man. “It’s sort of being born again to me,” Brown said. “I think it will change my life, and it needed to be changed. … I hadn’t eaten the right things, I hadn’t exercised, and I was a freak of nature.”

One of Brown’s sons, John Y. Brown III, added to the family’s political lineage by winning election as Kentucky secretary of state in 1995. He was re-elected without opposition in 1999.

While governor, Brown offered his credo one day in a news conference at his office in the Capitol at Frankfort: “Let me be free; let me be myself. I am different.”

On March 27, 1979, Brown interrupted his honeymoon with Phyllis George to announce his candidacy for governor of Kentucky. The announcement surprised most political observers because of his prior political apathy and because Brown had spent considerable time out of the state with his business ventures and lavish lifestyle. Funding his campaign with his own personal fortune, Brown launched a massive media campaign promoting his candidacy to help him overcome his late start in the race. He promised to run the state government like a business and to be a salesman for the state as governor.

Other candidates in the Democratic field included sitting lieutenant governor Thelma Stovall, Terry McBrayer (the choice of sitting governor Julian Carroll), congressman Carroll Hubbard, state auditor George Adkins, and Louisville mayor Harvey Sloane. Initially the leading candidate, Stovall was hampered during the campaign by ill health. During the campaign, Brown was attacked by McBrayer for refusing to release his federal tax returns. McBrayer also claimed that Brown had not voted in a Democratic primary since 1975, a charge validated by public voting records. Nevertheless, Brown won the primary by a margin of 25,000 votes. The race was so close that Sloane, Brown's closest competitor, refused to concede for two days. Brown defeated former Republican governor Louie B. Nunn in the 1979 general election by a vote of 588,088 to 381,278.

Concurrent with his post-KFC business ventures, Brown purchased an ownership stake in several professional basketball teams. He owned three professional basketball teams, one of those being the Boston Celtics. In 1970, Wendell Cherry assembled a group that included Brown to buy the American Basketball Association's (ABA) Kentucky Colonels. Following the 1972–73 season, Cherry sold his interest in the Colonels to a group from Cincinnati; Brown immediately purchased Cherry's interest from the group, reportedly to keep the team from moving to Cincinnati. He put his wife and a 10-woman board of directors in charge of the team. Colonels general manager Mike Storen felt that this was a sign that Brown was going to run the team "his way" and left the team as a result; two months later, he accepted the job of ABA league commissioner. Head coach Joe Mullaney followed soon after, saying that Brown was going to be too meddlesome in personnel decisions. Babe McCarthy lasted only one season as Mullaney's replacement; in 1975, Brown hired Hubie Brown as head coach. The team won the ABA championship the following year.

Although he had been hailed as a hero, first for saving the Colonels from moving to Cincinnati and then for bringing a championship to Louisville, Brown came under intense public criticism following the Colonels' championship season for selling the rights to center Dan Issel to the Baltimore Claws in a cost-saving move. He frequently clashed with coach Hubie Brown during the 1975–76 season, and at the end of the year, he accepted $3 million to fold the team during the 1976 ABA–NBA merger rather than paying $3 million for the team to join the National Basketball Association (NBA).

After folding the Colonels, Brown stated that basketball was not the kind of business he wanted to be involved in. Despite this declaration, he purchased half-ownership in the NBA's Buffalo Braves later in 1976. The Braves had posted a dismal 30–52 record in the 1975–76 season, and Brown immediately set out to make moves that would improve the franchise's fortunes in the next season. He re-signed All Star guard Randy Smith, who had threatened to leave as a free agent, then traded the club's first-round draft pick to the Milwaukee Bucks for center Swen Nater. In a single day, he made two significant trades. In the first, he swapped reigning Rookie of the Year Adrian Dantley for the Indiana Pacers' Billy Knight, who was second in the league in scoring the previous season. Four hours later, he acquired Nate "Tiny" Archibald from the New York Nets for George Johnson and a first-round draft pick in 1979. In 1977, Brown purchased the remaining share of the team from the owner Paul Snyder.

Brown joined his father's law practice after earning his law degree. From 1959 to 1965, he also served in the United States Army Reserve^. He served as legal counsel for Paul Hornung when Hornung was suspended for the 1963 National Football League season for gambling. After only a few years, Brown left his father's law firm and began a career in business.