CNN: S. Truett Cathy, who grew his boneless chicken sandwich business from one store in Georgia to the Chick-fil-A chain — a $5 billion company with more than 1,800 locations — died early Monday morning. He was 93. He had been ailing for some time.
“He died peacefully at home, surrounded by loved ones,” Chick-fil-A said in a statement posted on its website.
Deeply religious, Cathy made the decision when he opened his first store in Hapeville, Georgia, that it would stay closed on Sundays. Sixty-eight years later, that policy still stands at all Chick-fil-A stores.
Cathy first dreamed up his concept for a chicken sandwich after a poultry distributor wondered if there was a way to use leftover chicken from meals prepared for plane passengers.
He tried it on his customers at his Hapeville store, the Dwarf Grill. The first Chick-fil-A opened at a mall in Atlanta in 1967. Today, Chick-fil-A has surpassed KFC in U.S. sales. But the company Cathy founded remains privately held and family-owned. In recent years, Cathy handed over the reins of the company to his son, Dan, and assumed the title of chairman emeritus.
Chick-fil-A’s leadership shares Cathy’s religious beliefs, openly espousing biblical values not only in its operating principles but in its conservative definition of family as well.
Gay and lesbian rights groups have had a longstanding beef with Chick-fil-A over what they claim is the company’s opposition to gay marriage. In 2012, the company was forced to weather a firestorm of criticism when Dan Cathy weighed in on the issue in an interview with The Baptist Press.
“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” Cathy said. “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”
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I ventured over the oh so “welcoming to everyone” liberal web site Huffington Post to read the comments. While many were respectful, the No H8 crowd was ever-present (with a little colonialism and severe lack of self-awareness):
- This ‘hero’ of bigots is dead, and not a minute too soon.
- A little less hate and ignorance in the world is a good thing.
- will he be surprised when he meets god and learns that SHE is a bisexual who had an abortion
- Doing charity work cannot hide the fact that this man pushed hate while claiming his religion made him do it. Bigotry in the name of the bible.
- I just love when white men with white male privilege (yes, I realize he was “poor” but even poor white men get white male privilege so don’t respond with some gotcha’ comment if you can’t get your head around this) talk about how it’s just so easy to make money. He was raised during a time when women were expected to cook, make babies, and ask their husbands for money and when people of color still drank from segregated water fountains. AND, just to be sure that the status quo stays that way he’s a devout christian, a religion that goes out of its way to remind its followers that man is the head of the household. It must be pretty hard to make it when colonialism and religion have placed you at the top of the food chain. Yeah, tough breaks, buddy. Maybe the WBC will picket his funeral in a beautiful spin of irony.
- They say you should only say good things about the dead. So—-Truett Cathy is dead? Good.
- Adios, Mofo.
- Who cant wake up and read this and say the world is now a slightly better place to live?
- He is a giant example of why cultish organized religion causes harm while dining at the bible buffet. Ding dong.
- One more billionaire down, a few hundred more to go. Can’t be fast enough for my taste.
- This ‘hero’ of bigots is dead, and not a minute too soon.
- RIP… Rot in Purgatory
- Dirtbag won’t miss him
- Must just be a gift from god. Don’t know why you people are all sad.
- It’s a start. Blast away bigots.
- When a hater dies the world becomes A BETTER PLACE!
DCG
