Dave Thomas

Rex David Thomas, businessman: born Atlantic City, New Jersey 2 July 1932; married 1954 Lorraine Buskirk (one son, four daughters); died Fort Lauderdale, Florida 8 January 2002.

Wendy's might only be America's third largest hamburger chain – but if the industry had a public spokesman it wasn't the man from McDonald's or Burger King. It was the founder of Wendy's, Dave Thomas – philanthropist and child welfare activist and star of some of the most successful corporate advertising ever made.

The commercials only started in 1989, seven years after Thomas had stepped down as Wendy's chairman. But in his trade mark white short-sleeved shirt and red tie, the cosy and ever-smiling Thomas quickly became a household institution, as he extolled the virtues of his burger and fries on the nation's television screens. The ads were humorous and self-deprecating. Often they featured big names like the blues star B.B. King and the soap opera diva Susan Lucci.

Dave Thomas liked to claim that his was a rags-to-riches story that could only have happened in America. He was 12 when he got his first job as a grocer's delivery boy in Knoxville, Tennessee. At 15, he left school to work in the kitchens of the Hobby House restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, before enlisting for a brief stint in the military. As soon as he left the Army he returned to the Hobby Horse, where his future wife Lorraine worked as a waitress.

In the next few years Thomas moved from job to job, until he met the man who would change his life. While working at a Fort Wayne barbecue, he ran into none other than Col Harland Sanders, the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

By 1962, Thomas had moved to Columbus, Ohio, where Sanders had taken over four failing restaurants, in return for a promise of a 45 per cent stake if he turned them around. Six years later, Thomas sold his share in the restaurants back to KFC for $1.5m. At 35 years of age, Thomas was a millionaire. In 1969, he opened his first own fast food restaurant in downtown Columbus, naming it Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers after his youngest daughter, Melinda Lou, nicknamed Wendy.

The growth of his business thereafter was stunning. By 1972 Wendy's had issued its first franchises, by 1976 the company went public, and by the time of his death, Thomas was the honorary chairman and "senior spokesman" of a $7bn corporation, operating over 6,000 restaurants in the US and around the world.

But Thomas's life was about more than selling hamburgers. Himself adopted at six weeks old, he became an unflagging advocate for the cause of adoption, and in 1992 he created the non-profit organisation the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption. "I know first-hand how important it is for every child to have a home and loving family," he once testified to a Congressional Committee, as he lobbied for government incentives to encourage couples to adopt. "Without a family, I would not be where I am today." Proceeds of his two books, Dave's Way (1991) and Well Done! (1994) go to the foundation.

It was the television advertisements, however, which sealed Thomas's fame. After his first retirement in 1982, he was persuaded back seven years later when Wendy's hit a tricky financial patch. When the idea was first mooted of Thomas fronting Wendy's commercials, the industry predicted disaster. Instead the folksy, what-you-see-is-what-you-get Midwesterner became a smash hit.

Not only did he endow Wendy's with an image of downhome honesty which gave a healthy boost to sales; Thomas ultimately secured a place in the Guinness Book of Records, for the most corporate ads in which one of the company's executives appeared – some 800 of them. In 1996 Wendy's staged a look-alike contest, in which over 1,600 entrants vied for the grand prize: the chance to appear in a commercial with Dave Thomas.

Rupert Cornwell