Wallace “Wally” Amos, the founding father of the cookie empire that bore his name and made it famous, and who later campaigned for kids’s literacy, has died. He was 88 years old.
Amos created the Famous Amos cookie empire and eventually lost ownership of the corporate – in addition to the rights to make use of the catchy name Amos. In his later years, he became the owner of a cookie shop called Chip & Cookie in Hawaii, where he moved in 1977.
He died Tuesday at his home in Honolulu, along with his wife Carol at his side, his children said. He died from complications of dementia, they said.
“With his Panama hat, his kazoo and his boundless optimism, Famous Amos was a great American success story and a source of black pride,” said a press release from his children Sarah, Michael, Gregory and Shawn Amos.
He was married six times to 5 women, said his son Shawn, explaining that he and Carol separated, got back together after which remarried.
“He loved love,” said Sarah Amos.
They said their father “inspired a generation of entrepreneurs when he founded the world’s first cookie shop on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975.”
He was stationed in Hawaii with the Air Force and Famous Amos later enabled him to make the place his home.
Sarah Amos, who was born in Hawaii, remembers her father flying backwards and forwards to the U.S. mainland at 4 a.m. and taking business calls.
“It’s hard to run a business and work with people on the mainland when you’re in Hawaii,” she said. “But he made the sacrifice.”
Although Wally Amos was a terrific promoter, he struggled as a business person and eventually lost control of the corporate. He left because he didn’t want to simply be its figurehead, Sarah Amos said.
The subsequent lack of the corporate and the best to make use of his name was a deeply painful and private matter for Shawn Amos. “The rest of his life and his subsequent professional activities were limited to attempts to get him to reclaim that space,” he said.
Wally Amos also co-founded Uncle Wally’s Muffin Co., whose products are stocked in shops nationwide. But Amos said fame never really meant much to him.
“Being famous is highly overrated anyway,” Amos told the Associated Press in 2007.
His muffin company, based in Shirley, NY, was originally founded as Uncle Noname Cookie Co. in 1992, a number of years after Amos lost Famous Amos, which still ceaselessly uses his name on its products.
Amos had said that the Famous Amos cookies sold today weren’t his cookies, which contained plenty of chocolate, real butter and pure vanilla extract.
“You can’t compare machine-made cookies to handmade cookies,” he told AP. “It’s like comparing a Rolls Royce to a Volkswagen.”
However, Uncle Noname failed as a result of debts and problems with its contract manufacturers.
The company filed for bankruptcy in 1996, gave up cookie production and focused on muffin production, on the suggestion of Amos’ business partner Lou Avignone.
At his now-closed Hawaii Cookie Shop, he sold bite-sized cookies much like those he first sold on the Famous Amos Hollywood store.
Amos was also involved in promoting reading. For example, his store had a reading room with dozens of donated books, and Amos normally spent Saturdays sitting in a rocking chair, wearing a watermelon hat, reading to children.
Sarah Amos remembered him reading to the youngsters at Hanahauʻoli School and continuing to achieve this after she graduated from the small elementary school.
The former highschool dropout wrote eight books, served as a spokesperson for the Literacy Volunteers of America organization for twenty-four years, and gave motivational speeches to corporations, universities, and other groups.
Amos has received quite a few awards for his volunteer work, including the Literacy Award from President George HW Bush in 1991.
“Your greatest contribution to your country is not your straw hat on display in the Smithsonian Museum, but the people who inspired you to learn to read,” Bush said.
In considered one of his books, Man With No Name: Turn Lemons Into Lemonade, Amos explained how he lost Famous Amos before it was sold to a Taiwanese company for $63 million in 1991. Despite good sales, the corporate began making losses in 1985, so Amos brought in outside investors.
“The new owners kept grabbing more and more of my share until I suddenly found that I had lost all of my shares in the company I had founded,” Amos wrote. It wasn’t long before the corporate modified hands 4 times.
Sarah Amos said he didn’t bake for about two years after splitting up with Famous Amos. After rediscovering his love of baking, he founded Hawaiian company Chip & Cookie in 1991.
Amos was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and moved to New York City on the age of 12 due to his parents’ divorce. He lived with an aunt, Della Bryant, who taught him easy methods to bake chocolate chip cookies.
He later dropped out of highschool to hitch the Air Force before working as a postal clerk on the William Morris Agency. There he became a talent agent, working with The Supremes, Simon & Garfunkel and Marvin Gaye before borrowing $25,000 to start out his cookie business.
He was the primary black agent within the business, Shawn Amos said.
Shawn and Sarah said it wasn’t until after their parents were born that they realized the importance of chocolate chip cookies to their family.
“When we first baked cookies with our kids, we realized that this is actually a family affair,” Shawn said. “It’s a gift from him. It’s part of our heritage.”
