Marriott, Founder of Worldwide Hotel Chain, Dies at 84

John Willard Marriott, whose worldwide chain of hotels began with a root beer stand he bought with borrowed money nearly 50 years ago, is dead at the age of 84, it was announced here Wednesday.

The son of a bankrupt sheep rancher, whose Marriott Corp. grew to become a conglomerate that included restaurant chains and airline and institutional food services, died Tuesday night at a hospital in Wolfeboro, N.H., near his summer home.

Thomas Foran, personnel director at Huggins Hospital, said Marriott had died of a heart attack. A titan in the hotel and food service world, Marriott at his death was chairman of the board of the 140,000-employee Marriott Corp., which operates a worldwide network of more than 125 hotels, 2,500 fast-food restaurants, airport gift shops and flight kitchens. In 1964 he had turned over the presidency and in 1972 the post of chief executive officer to his son, J. Willard Marriott Jr.

Mormon Horatio Alger

Marriott also was well known in Republican circles, and was a leader in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where he was often called the Mormon Horatio Alger.

He was chairman of President Richard M. Nixon’s inaugural committees in 1968 and 1972, and was a supporter of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gerald R. Ford and a friend of President Reagan. Reagan visited the Marriott family ranch in Virginia in 1983.

“J.W. Marriott was a living example of the American dream . . . he built an enterprise, raised a family, both of which are models for us all,” Reagan said Wednesday. “No one ever had an unkind word about Bill Marriott. He never quite got used to the trappings of status that his hard-earned success brought, preferring instead the quiet and unpretentious world of life on his farm with his beloved family.”

Borrowed $1,500

With $1,500 in borrowed money and $1,000 in savings, Marriott bought one of the first A&W; root beer franchises and drove east from Utah in 1927 to sell his product, banking on the belief that in the sultry, sticky summers of a pre-air-conditioned Washington, root beer would be a popular drink.

He had been in New England serving a two-year missionary requirement for Mormons and returned to Utah to find that the price of sheep had dropped from $14 to $3 a head and his father, with most other sheep ranchers, had gone bankrupt.

With his bride, Alice, Marriott opened a shop with sawdust on the floor and nine stools at the counter in Washington. When the weather turned cool that fall they borrowed recipes from the chef at the nearby Mexican Embassy and began selling chili, barbecue and hot tamales, foods that were popular in Marriott’s native West. He called his place the “Hot Shoppe.”

Chain Grew Steadily

Five years later there were seven Hot Shoppes in the Washington area, and although many restaurants failed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Marriott’s Hot Shoppes grew steadily. In 1937, he noticed airplane passengers at National Airport carrying food on board from a nearby Hot Shoppe, and he began catering meals for airlines. He opened his first motor hotel, the Twin Bridges Marriott, on the Virginia side of the 14th Street bridge in 1957.