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Thomas, Dave

Appears in
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America

By Andrew F. Smith

Published 2004

  • About

R. David Thomas (1932–2002) was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey; he was adopted shortly afterward and raised in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His adopted family move around. At the age of twelve, he was hired for a restaurant job at a family restaurant in Knoxville, Tennessee. Four years later, he dropped out of high school to work at the Hobby House Restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana. After a stint in the army, he returned to Hobby House. In 1954 he married Lorraine Buskirk, and their daughter Melinda Lou was nicknamed “Wendy.” Over the next few years Thomas worked at many restaurants. He became the operations manager for three hundred regional Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants, and he met Harland Sanders (according to Thomas’s autobiography, Dave’s Way, published in 1991, Colonel Sanders was one of his greatest influences).

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