Alice Sheets Marriott; Co-Founded International Hotel, Restaurant Chain

Alice Sheets Marriott, 92, hands-on matriarch who helped create the international hotel and restaurant chain. In 1927, she married J. Willard Marriott and the couple drove from their native Utah to Washington, D.C. in a Model T to operate a root beer stand. She became the bookkeeper, collecting the sticky nickels from the counter and depositing them daily in a bank. When cooler fall weather came, the Spanish-speaking Alice Marriott asked the Mexican Embassy chef for recipes for chili con carne and tamales. After practicing for two days in her apartment kitchen, she added the spicy fare to the menu and renamed the stand “Hot Shoppe.” That was the first of 65 Hot Shoppe restaurants that eventually operated in 11 Eastern states. The last closed in December. The couple also expanded into hotels, airline catering and other restaurant operations as they raised the two sons who now supervise five Marriott companies with combined annual sales of more than $20 billion. Marriott was a trustee of the Kennedy Center for 20 years, on the board of the Arthritis Foundation’s Washington chapter and a member of the National Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases Advisory Council. She was long a member of the Republican National Committee and treasurer of three GOP national conventions. A graduate of the University of Utah, she gave endowments to that school and to Brigham Young University. On Monday in Washington.