To view the live stream of the memorial service please click here.  This live stream will begin at 2:00 p.m. on Monday, January 18, 2021.

Howard B. Johnson, 71, of Exton, passed away on Monday, January 11, 2021 at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery County after a 17-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease.  He was the beloved husband of Patty A. Veach Johnson, with whom he shared 40 years of marriage.

Born in New Castle, Delaware, he was the son of the late Howard and Evelyn Rudd Johnson.

There is nothing Howard loved to do more than coach his sons in baseball and basketball. Advertisement. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. He was a veteran of the United States Navy. Early life [ edit] Howards system of having the licensees bear startup cost rather than the chain and requiring licensees to purchase food and supplies directly from Johnsons distribution network was a relatively new idea and one that would prove to be a tremendous financial success for nearly half a century. In this business there are three rules to remember: Location, location, and location. Existing locations were aging and franchisees were either unable or unwilling to remodel. The only thing that could derail Howard Johnsons rise to the top was international war. The parent company filed for bankruptcy in 2004, after which the franchised store owners came together to form an LLC and purchase the rights. For those wishing to see what happened to the old Howard Johnsons restaurants, HoJoLands HoJo Ghosts pages do a good job chronicling the abandonment and changes. Kushner claimed the plant closures would not affect the re-launch of HoJos frozen foods and that La Mancha was already in the process of securing a new manufacturer for its retail food line. For the 1940 Worlds Fair the company built Americas largest roadside restaurant in Queens, New York. For the next two years the chain added fifteen restaurants per year. With a $2,000 loan Howard opened the Howard D. Johnson Co. Patent Medicines and Toilet Articles shop. Despite being tasked with constructing frozen dishes, the chefs treated the role seriously and genuinely improved the quality of meals. Once La Mancha Group could stabilize the food menu, the company intended to re-open new Howard Johnson restaurants across the United States. The chain was later severed from Howard Johnsons Company after a 1985 takeover. The company also owned 17 cold storage, manufacturing, and processing plants in 11 states, as well as ten Red Coach Grill Restaurants, an upscale specialized chain that Howard D. founded in 1938. Brennan was on his regular jog this morning at Sawnee Mountain when he collapsed suddenly. Howard Johnson was allowed to become tired and stale. Johnson clipped the frankfurters at both ends and notched them lengthwise. He was born in Goessel, Kansas on December 23, 1936, the son of Wayne and Maxine (Kiddoo) Johnson. This was dangerously exposed after the oil crisis of 1973. howard brennan johnson obituary When he arrived at the company, the 24 year-old Howard Brennan Bud Johnson was fresh out of Harvard Business School. Segregation in a Dover, Delaware Howard Johnsons restaurant sparked an international crisis in 1957 when it refused service to the finance minister of Ghana. You could put one at the end of a dirt road in the woods back here and youd do business. Through several moves the younger Johnson modernized the company. Johnson was succeeded by G. Michael Hostage, a fifteen-year veteran of Marriott recruited by Imperial to take over the post in 1981. Joseph was born January 5, 1928 in Cambridge, a son of the late Joseph and Mary (Donovan) Brennan. After. Today all have closed, except one. Johnson, Sr. had told his son that he should "start at the top of the company and work his way down.". Plot. After the lawsuits, expiring toll road contracts and observing of an oil crisis-reduced travel season, HoJos net earnings in 1980 had been halved to $14.7 million. In uniform, managers were indistinguishable from restaurant workers. As of October 2017, thislisting has been removed and it can only be accessed via the web archive. These specialists determined, through tests of optical and mental reflexes, it would take passing motorists less than 20 seconds to identify the Nims-style Howard Johnson motor lodge and restaurant. Times Gazette. By the end of the 1970s the brand had become synonymous with bland. He was raised in Belmont and was a graduate of Belmont High School. Fewer Americans traveled and raw materials were more scarce. Kushner and La Mancha were unresponsive, apparently having walked away from the investment which sent the remnants of the restaurant chain back to Wyndham. Nevertheless, the stock continued to outperform and was one of the top three hotel stocksfrom July 1982 to January 1988 (the others being Marriott Corporation and Hilton Hotels). They agreed Howard Johnson would supply the name and the products and his partner would sell them. Johnson adapted his business as a food supplier for the U.S. military. Nims most well-known contribution was the Series 77 (aka Nims-type) building. more than a dozen of his employees. Howard Johnson was getting hammered in the restaurants, which throughout the 1970s was catering to a decaying market. During the shows dinner break, crowds of influential Bostonians made their way to the restaurant. Site selection was a crucial component of success. On the surface Rapid Reservations was a technological innovation, but it was also a business innovation. In 1997 HFS merged with Comp-U-Card International (CUC) Inc. to form a new company, Cendant, in an $11 billion deal. Howard Deering Johnson was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1897. In his delightful autobiography, The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen, Jacques Pepin describes his years working at Howard Johnson's. He deeply admired Howard Johnson, who he called "charismatic, powerful and soft-spoken," a straightforward businessman open to new ideas. In 1996 the owners formed Howard Johnson Acquisition Corporation and successfully negotiated the rights from HFS to maintain and support the franchised Howard Johnson motor lodges. St. Louis Sun obituary index, 1989-1990 - St. Louis County Library Once Howard Johnsons became a public company, shareholder involvement brought an ongoing need for management to lower costs and improve profits. Obituary for Virginia H. (Binversie) Brennan | Lakeshore Family Funeral California Obituaries searchable index of a database of over 250,000 obituaries at Obituary Depot. From 1942 until 1945 the Howard Johnsons chain performed in this role, expansion plans on hold as the company served food to domestic war volunteers and Army recruits. Oklahoma high school wrestling 2023 state championship results Howard Johnson's (Johnsonverse) - DifferentHistory Wikia Man, cats removed from Hadley home with no heat, running water I moved there from Le Pavillon, a temple of French haute cuisine, where I had been working since my arrival in the United States in 1959.. 126: Gage Walker, Bixby, dec. JJ McComas, Stillwater, 3-1 (tb1) 132: Cael Hughes, Stillwater, dec. Hunter Hollingsworth, Edmond North, 4-0 138: Jace Roller, Bixby . As Ppin described in a later memoir, I had been in America only eight months when I started working at Howard Johnsons. 20 Jun 1972 (aged 75) Milton, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, USA. Courtesy photo The Coeur d'Alene Lakers fourth grade AAU girls basketball team went 4-0 this past weekend to win the Hooptown tournament championship. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG) Valerie . BECKY BRENNAN OBITUARY. Location will make you if you do a good selling job, but a good location will almost carry you if you do a poor job.. The owners banded together and formed Franchise Associates Incorporated (FAI) on May 22nd, 1986. Perhaps most damaging was the graceless aging of its restaurants. Bud was young but his resume was fairly accomplished for a person his age; in addition to his time at Harvard Business he graduated from Yale and spent two years in the Navy. This hastened the demise of the restaurants, which were also contractually bound to a supply chain and brand that was rapidly deteriorating. Initially FAI put in a decent shift, trying a prototype restaurant and unveiling new foods for the health-conscious, revealed in a new menu introduced in 1990. The 1970s kicked off with a series of national negative publicity events for the Howard Johnson Company. In the front is . Blackstone also purchased Days Inn out of bankruptcy in 1991 and named the new hotel group Hospitality Franchise Systems, Inc. Hospitality Franchise Systems was formed in 1990 with the intent of purchasing ailing or undervalued franchise brands and the rights to the brand names. Howard Johnson: How One Man Changed an Industry - Vacations Made Easy He'd been unwell for some time with an undisclosed illness. The desk clerk turned a dial and pressed a bar to connect to any of the hundreds of other Howard Johnson Motor Lodges in the country. I stopped all expansion, and once you stop, you know how hard it is to get the monster going again, an opportunity which was in the best interests of the Howard Johnson shareholders. By the end of that year, FAI owned about 85 of the 110 remaining Howard Johnsons restaurants. The following year the company unveiled a much-anticipated brand reinvigoration at the Global Wyndham Group Conference in September.   

In addition to his wife, Howard is survived by his sons, Howard Aaron Johnson and his wife Ashley and Andrew B. Johnson.  He is also survived by his siblings, Stanley, Judy, Marva, Linda and Norma and by many nieces and nephews.  He was predeceased by his brother, Randall Johnson.

A public viewing will be held on Monday, January 18, 2021 from 12:45-1:45 p.m. at the James J. Terry Funeral Home, 736 E. Lancaster Avenue, Downingtown.  Due to the Covid pandemic, the memorial service will be held privately with the family.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions can be made to the Michael J. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted It was this financial crisis which led Howard to the concept of franchising his idea via exclusive distribution agreements. The orange roof is symbolic. Visitation: Monday, March 6, 2023 from 11:00am to 12:00pm Service: Monday, March 6, 2023 at 12:00pm Charisse (McLaurin) Torres-Rios, 53, of Topeka, passed away unexpectedly on Friday, February 24, 2023. In 1971 two irate guests at a downtown New Orleans HoJo set the hotel on fire, killing six guests. FAI began to negotiate with Prime for the rights to the restaurant name. Howard B. Johnson | Obituaries | lacrossetribune.com (For comparison, present-day chain Chipotle, who allocates more than the industry average to purchasing its fresh food, spends 35%). Howard Johnson (1897-1972) - Find a Grave Memorial Howard Deering Johnson's son, Howard Brennan Johnson, took over the hotels and restaurants from his father in 1959, and by the early 1970s there were over 700 Howard Johnson locations. He explained his actions: My expansion plans got stalled in the 1974 oil embargo. Feb. 27, 2023 Updated Wed., March 1, 2023 at 9:59 a.m. University High School has announced its first-semester honor roll for the 2022-23 school year. Howard Brennan retired the Simple Simon & Pieman logo and the bottomless cup of coffee a one-time Howard Johnsons staple and victim of skyrocketing coffee prices. The secret was to double the amount of normal butterfat, and to use only natural ingredients. Inside, rustic traditional seating was replaced with minimalist benches. Burial. Title: Moth. at inflated prices. Remembering Howard Johnson's | Local News | thesunchronicle.com Youth Sports March 1, 2023. This would appear to indicate the last Howard Johnsons restaurant will close. This led to a series of cost-cutting measures which only further eroded the brand. Howard Johnson Goes From One Restaurant to 1000 to Zero The turnpike deals from 1940 helped grow the Howard Johnsons chain by nearly 50% in one year. Johnsons established network of commissaries offered a synergistic large-scale distribution system that could satisfy the requirements of the U.S. Government with minimal alteration. Bangor HoJo owners David and Sally Patel had purchased from Khan years prior and kept their restaurant going even as business slowed and hours were scaled back. One of Johnson Sr.s final contributions was the hiring of New York chefsPierre FraneyandJacques Ppin in 1960 to oversee food development at the companys main commissary. The younger generation is eating more snack items and, We all want the dinner business, but you have those horrible margins involved in, So we have to sell a lot of liquor, but in a coffee shop you cant sell more than seven or eight percent liquor, I overreacted. Marriotts plan to eliminate and convert all of the Howard Johnsons restaurants was met with resistance from many of the franchisees, who had much invested in the Howard Johnson brand and (among other things) did not want to incur the expense of a new brand remodel. After four years of unsuccessfully trying to turn Howard Johnsons around, Imperial decided to sell. Death, Burial, Cemetery & Obituaries - MyHeritage Today's Highlight in History: On March 1, 1974, seven people, including former Nixon White House aides H.R. Shortly after its implementation, the RRS became the first in the nation to take advantage of Bell Systems then-new inward watt service, developed in 1967. Site specialists were hired to identify top real estate locations to build new motor lodges. Howard Johnson, who gave the country 28 flavors of ice cream and a chain of restaurants to buy them from, died yesterday in Lenox Hill Hospitall. Howard B. Johnson, 71, of Exton, passed away on Monday, January 11, 2021 at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery County after a 17-year battle with Parkinson's Disease. Under Cendant Howard Johnson launched a new line of fewer-frills hotels in 1997. Compounding these concerns was the lack of quality control oversight, a side effect of the company having a rapid succession of speculative owners. In 1959, Howard Johnson stepped down as head of the company and his son, Howard Brennan "Bud" Johnson, formally took over. Becky Lynn Brennan departed this life on November 11, 2021, at the age of 65. Chairman Johnson remarked Weve all got to figure out where the children are going to be moving and what they want in terms of food and lodging. In 1995 the companys name was officially shortened to HFS, Inc. The hotels were healthy; by the end of the year HFS was operating 523 Howard Johnson hotels throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South America. In an interesting way HoJos initial public stock offering was another contributor to the companys decline. La Manchas attempt to save Howard Johnsons fizzled out after a few years, derailed by affiliate bankruptcies, the 2008 financial crisis, and prickly relationships with restaurant owners. He was an avid fan of the game of basketball, playing both in high school and college. [ Related: While a student at the University of Chicago in 1962, Bernie Sanders was an organizer of CORE events. Her father was the founder of the restaurant chain Howard Johnson's, recognized as the largest restaurant chain in the world . She was a doting "Mimi" to her grandchildren, Aden Jake Airhart and Mila Grace Airhart. And Howard Johnson needs all those same things.. Latest on Nottingham Forest forward Brennan Johnson including news, stats, videos, highlights and more on ESPN By offering customers an easy way to call ahead to the next motor lodge, Howard Johnsons encouraged additional stays at other Howard Johnson Motor Lodges. Partitions were formed from repeating circles, and Formica tabletops replaced old wood tables. He noticed the marble soda fountain was the busiest part of his drugstore, which sprouted an idea and led to a re-brand. I think its a great way to make money. AP News - 812 days ago The Lake George location closed and the property was listed for sale in the spring of 2012, leaving just two Howard Johnsons restaurants: Lake Placid, New York, and Bangor, Maine and by this time the Bangor location no longer had the distinctive orange roof. During the 1950s the number of Howard Johnsons restaurants tripled. The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies. Reaping the rewards of their success, the Johnson family cashed out between 1961 and 1967, selling nearly two million shares of stock for close to one billion dollars. He dropped out of grade school and went to work for his fathers cigar company before he was a teenager. She scored in an 11-10 win over Alabama-Huntsville. Janice Howard Johnson Obituary (1931 - 2023) | Woodstock, Georgia At the age of 13, he taught himself to play baritone saxophone; at 14, he began on the tuba, which he played in both his high-school marching and concert bands. The result improved gross revenues, which for 1967 were reported as $200 million. Youth Sports March 1, 2023 | Coeur d'Alene Press As he proceeded, police began broadcasting a description of the shooter based on the eyewitness account of Howard Brennan, a 44-year-old steamfitter who had been watching the presidential. The only reason he hadnt changed the restaurants name, he says, is because hes reluctant to spend the $15,000 to $20,000 to redo all the signs. Johnson repeated his formula with motor lodges, creating one of the worlds largest hotel chains. California Obituary Project archived newspaper obituaries indexed by county at US GenWeb Archives. He caught a break in 1929 when the mayor of Boston prohibited the planned theater production of Eugene ONeills Strange Interlude in the city. Sold locations were typically converted to another brand or demolished. It didnt surprise me that after Howard D. Johnsons death in 1972, his organization lost its raison detre. It was discovered in 1998 that CUC had inflated its profits for years the fraud was massive and led to investors losing $19 billion. As of 2017 Wyndham still owns the Howard Johnson hotel brand and maintains its webpage. The realtor signs were taken down, but the property remained for saleas of late 2016. Despite his success with Howard Johnsons, Rufus Nims involvement with the company ended abruptly in 1958. Howard Johnson's: The Facts - American Memory Lane a fixture in railroad terminals in the late 1800s. Remember When - Howard Johnson's? - Lowell Sun -. Brennan, Howard L., 64 of Kemp, Kaufman County, Howard B. Johnson Obituary - Tribute Archive Fox Foundation.

Please Note: To align with the Governors guidance and protect the health of those in attendance, all guests attending are asked to wear a mask and social distance.  Due to the PA Governor’s orders, funeral home staff will be limiting the number of guests allowed in the funeral home at one time.  Please dress accordingly and be prepared to stand in line outside of the funeral home.  All guests are also asked not to touch the family, keep your distance and to keep conversation limited to allow other guests to enter in a reasonable time.