Who was Colonel Sanders? Was he from Kentucky?

"Colonel" Harlan Sanders was indeed a real person. He got his title as a "Kentucky Colonel" from the Secretary of State of Kentucky, as did many, many others, for no reason at all other than the friendship of the Secretary or the Governor. My father told me he got his because he was in the Secretary's office one day when she was signing a stack of the citations and asked if he would like one too.

Sanders owned a restaurant and motel in Corbin, Kentucky, in the southeastern corner of the state, next to what is now I-75. Travelers passing through enjoyed his unique fried chicken and began asking for take-out orders. Sanders got the idea to franchise his cooking method, and the company now known as "KFC" (originally "Kentucky Fried Chicken" in the pre-food nazi era) was born. Realizing that the image of the "Kentucky Colonel" would make a good trademark, he grew the Van Dyke and started dressing in the white suits with string ties. He also bought a Rolls-Royce at a time when no one between the Appalachians and the Sierra Nevada had one, and the "wow" factor, along with the taste of the chicken, made him a star.

I remember seeing him often dining at the Blue Boar Cafeteria at the Mall in St Matthews, Ky, just up the road from Shelbyville, where he had his last restaurant, which still exists. He used to patronize the barber shop there, and I can clearly see him talking to the bootblack (they still had them in those days) about how he wanted his shoes polished.

His persona ended at his voice. We had come to expect a sort of "Senator Claghorn" voice, from the character on Fred Allen's radio show, lampooned mercilessly by Mel Blanc in the Warner's cartoon character "Foghorn Leghorn," but what we got was a flat monotone with an eastern Kentucky twang. Still, he was a real character, and the original recepie for the "eleven different herbs and spices" is written in his own hand, and reputed to be in a safe in the President's office in that white mansion next to the Watterson Expressway that is KFC's International Headquarters, in Louisville.

Harland David Sanders was born on a farm in Henryville, Indiana on September 9, 1890

He was Elvis's manager.