J.C. Massey; Helped Build Kentucky Fried Chicken

Jack C. Massey, whose millions helped build Kentucky Fried Chicken Co. into an international franchise empire, has died of pneumonia at age 85.

Massey, who also was a co-founder of Hospital Corp. of America, died Thursday at a hospital in Palm Beach, Fla., said Mimi Scruggs, his secretary at Massey Investment Co. in Nashville.

Massey, who took three companies to the New York Stock Exchange, retired in 1978 and had been staying at his winter home in Florida.

From a chain of six drugstores (Massey had started as a delivery boy in his uncle’s pharmacy in Tennille, Ga.), the businessman founded Massey Surgical Supply Inc. in 1930. He sold that company for about $1 million in 1961 with the intention of retiring but soon found himself in other business ventures.

In 1964 Massey and John Y. Brown, who later became governor of Kentucky, bought Kentucky Fried Chicken from its founder, Col. Harland Sanders.

Sanders, who died in 1980, at first resisted their offers. He finally sold after Brown agreed to keep the colonel’s secret herbs and spices recipe intact.

With Brown providing the marketing skills and Massey the money, the two men built the company into the world’s largest commercial marketer of prepared food. They later sold the business to Heublein Corp.

Massey also founded HCA with Dr. Thomas F. Frist, and his son, Dr. Thomas Frist Jr., in 1968. Within 18 months the company had 11 hospitals, and within 10 years had reached $1 billion in sales and was the country’s largest owner and operator of hospitals.

HCA had acquired more than 420 hospitals by the mid-1980s. It has sold many, but still owns or operates 150 facilities and is the country’s largest hospital management company, with revenues of about $4.5 billion. HCA management took the company private last year in a $6-billion leveraged buyout.

Massey’s third company to reach the New York Stock Exchange was Winner’s Corp., now Volunteer Capital Corp. As Winner’s it was one of the largest franchisees of Wendy’s International hamburger outlets.

Massey is survived by his wife, Alyne, a daughter and three grandchildren.