Molson Coors Brewing Company (NYSE: TAP; TSX: TPX) is saddened
to announce that William (“Bill”) K. Coors, former chairman of the
board of Adolph Coors Company and one of the truly great beer
industry leaders, died peacefully at his home today at age 102.
This press release features multimedia. View
the full release here:
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181013005016/en/
William (“Bill”) K. Coors (Photo:
Business Wire)
Coors was born Aug. 11, 1916, the grandson of Adolph Coors
Company founder Adolph Coors. He started his career at the company
in 1939.
During his more than 65 years with the company, he contributed
heavily to the company’s rise from a regional brewer, distributing
in only a few western states, to one of the world’s largest
breweries. Under his watch, Coors survived and prospered while
hundreds of breweries went out of business. “The fact that we
survived and even grew over the years when so many breweries went
out of business was an accomplishment that all Coors employees can
be proud of,” he would say.
With the company’s triumphs and failures, Bill Coors learned to
develop and maintain a positive outlook on life. “I’ve taken my
kicks,” Coors said, “but I have had a fascinating life and I’ve
been richly rewarded.”
President and CEO of Molson Coors, Mark Hunter, said, “Our
company stands on the shoulders of giants like Bill Coors. His
dedication, hard work and ingenuity, helped shape not only our
company but the entire beer industry. We honor his memory by
rededicating ourselves to continuing the work he loved so much –
brewing the best tasting, highest quality beer to share with family
and friends. Cheers to you Uncle Bill!”
In 1959, at the start of his tenure as chairman, Coors succeeded
in revolutionizing the entire beverage industry with the creation
and development of the aluminum can. He faced significant
resistance from companies unwilling to change and even from the
aluminum industry itself, but he stuck with his idea and changed an
entire industry.
Coors also was a pioneer in the world of corporate wellness.
Through his foresight and leadership, the company started one of
the first employee wellness centers in the country and it still
exists today.
Coors attended primary school in Golden, Colo., and spent four
years at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, N.H., before entering
Princeton University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in
chemical engineering in 1938 and a graduate degree in 1939.
Bill Coors was involved with numerous civic, educational and
business organizations over the years, including: Boys and Girls
Club of Denver Foundation, board of trustees; Colorado Symphony
Orchestra, board of trustees; Colorado Outward Bound School,
founding/lifetime trustee; Colorado Health Care Purchasing
Alliance, board member; Colorado Business Coalition for Health,
board chairman; Colorado School of Mines Foundation, board member;
Denver University, board of trustees, and Colorado University
President’s Leadership Class, lifetime trustee.
Bill Coors’ efforts and strong commitment to improving the
quality of life around him earned him numerous awards, including
Citizen of the West in 1992; the Patriots Award presented by the
Congressional Medal of Honor Society; the Jewish National Fund Tree
of Life Award and the Daniel Ritchie Award.
Bill is survived by his children Margaret
Coors Beresford and her husband Michael, May Louise Coors
and her husband Sharad Atre and Williams Scott Coors and
his partner David Hurt, 7 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren,
and a great number of nieces, nephews, great-nieces and
great-nephews. He is pre-deceased by his parents Adolph and
May Coors Jr., his brothers Adolph Coors III, Joseph
Coors, Sr., and his sister May
Louise Tooker. Pursuant to his directive no formal
memorial ceremonies will be held. In lieu of flowers or other
sentiments, the family welcomes you to contribute to the William K.
Coors Memorial Fund hosted by the Denver Foundation.
Bill Coors. Father. Son. Uncle. Legend.
Bill Coors was born on August 11, 1916, the second son of Adolph
Coors Jr. and May Coors. He grew up in a bungalow tucked behind the
Adolph Coors Brewery with his two brothers, Adolph III and Joseph,
and his sister May. The brewery grounds became their playground,
where they shot home movies, rowed a canoe along the creek and made
model airplanes out of wood in the company machine shop. At the age
of six, Bill began piano lessons. His passion for playing continued
throughout his entire life, and one of his most treasured
possessions is his B�sendorfer piano. When Bill was asked to play
the piano for the Founder’s Day celebration at the University of
Denver in 1998, he had his own piano moved to the venue. When he
finished playing, Bill, at the age of 81, received a standing
ovation from the audience of 800 guests.
At the age of thirteen, Bill went to school at Exeter, where he
joined crew, an activity he continued when he went to Princeton to
obtain his graduate degree in Chemical Engineering. His lifelong
pursuit of health and wellness has its roots in his youthful days
rowing. Over the years, Bill struggled with and overcame tragedy,
health issues and stress and he was passionate about sharing what
he learned with others. Bill had a vision of wellness and
recognized that stress in the workplace destroyed good workers. The
Bill Coors Wellness Center, established in 1981, has won awards,
honors and recognition as one of the first and most comprehensive
industry based primary and secondary health promotion programs in
the country. Bill has written and spoken extensively on the
benefits of wellness and set a high standard for himself. In 1974,
at the age of 58, Bill Coors reached the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro
– at the time, he was the oldest person to achieve that feat. The
film “Bill Coors: The Will to Live” by Kerry David, released in
2018, documents Bill’s journey of personal wellness.
After Bill graduated from Princeton University in 1939, he
returned home to Golden, Colorado to work for his father. Bill’s
first marriage to Geraldine Jackson, was blessed with 4 children, 3
girls: Missy, Margaret (Maggie) and May, and a boy: William Kistler
Jr. (Billy). Billy and Missy tragically passed away before their
father. His second marriage with Phyliss Mahaffey was blessed with
another son, Scott. Later in life he married Rita Bass, who
predeceased him in 2015. Bill’s first job back in Golden after
graduation was working for Coors Porcelain Company, which has
evolved into today’s CoorsTek. Bill spent seven years at “the
Pottery.” During his tenure he set up and launched the company’s
first isostatic insulator line from the tools and equipment sold to
Coors Porcelain from Champion Spark Plug Company. Bill remembers
this time fondly, as for the first time in his life, he was totally
in charge of a project; from the installation of the equipment to
the operation the entire production line from start to finish. The
quality and performance of the insulators produced at Coors
Porcelain were unmatched and, during WWII, these insulators were
used at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in calutrons – which used
the electromagnetic separation method to separate uranium isotopes.
Many of these calutrons, with Bill’s insulators inside, were later
used to produce over 200 stable isotopes used for cancer treatment,
medical diagnostics, nonproliferation, and other applications. On
December 2, 2016, U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy
Management, presented Bill with the Energy Secretary’s Appreciation
Award in Golden, Colorado. The award recognized his historic role
in providing critical insulators to the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers Manhattan Engineer District (also known as the Manhattan
Project) during World War II. In 1946, Joe Coors Sr. took over
leadership at Coors Porcelain and led the company to become a
leading technical ceramics company, while Bill transitioned to the
brewery to assist his father and become a legend in the
industry.
Bill Coors spent over 70 years driving change and shaping the
path of the Coors Brewery through his passion for innovation. The
development of the recyclable aluminum can for beer is perhaps one
of his proudest and most well-known accomplishments. The idea of an
aluminum can captured Bill’s interest for two primary reasons -
aluminum cans could be recycled and they didn’t have a welded seam
making them easy to sterilize. This gave new life to Bill’s
innovative idea of sterile filling and refrigerated marketing for
beer. Together, with Coors Porcelain Company, a task force was
created to make the dream a reality and in 1959, Coors introduced
the first recyclable, sterile filled can on the market and
revolutionized the entire beverage industry. Bill often said of
that time: “Would the aluminum can have ever arrived without me? Of
course, its advent was inevitable. All I did was hurry it along.”
The release of the can in turn led to one of the most successful
recycling programs in the country – Cash for Cans. Bill received
many awards for these accomplishments; among them was the Modern
Metals Man of the Year for the pioneering of the aluminum can in
1959 and the Alcoa Man of the Year for Aluminum Can Recycling in
1975.
Bill is known for his famous quote, “Barley is to beer as grapes
are to wine,” and the barley program at Coors is reflective of his
passion for quality barley. In 1949, Bill and his brother Joe
purchased land in the San Luis Valley in Colorado to start their
experimental barley farm and launched the quest to develop the
finest brewing barley in the world and the close association with
barley growers themselves. For years Bill participated in Barley
Field Days events celebrating growers because he felt strongly that
his relationship with the growers was special. In 2016, in
recognition for his years of commitment to the Coors barley program
and the people who grow the barley used in Coors beer, the Golden
Malting group named their newest variety of barley the Bill Coors
100, just in time for Bill’s 100th birthday.
In his years working for Adolph Coors Brewing Company, Bill saw
it grow from a small regional brewery that was distributed in only
12 states and producing 145,000 barrels of beer to a company that
distributes worldwide and produces over 45 million barrels of beer.
This growth is due in no small part to the efforts of Bill, his
brother Joe, and his five nephews; Joe Jr., Jeff, Pete, Grover and
John. In 2017, Bill received the Jeff Becker Beer Industry Service
Award for a lifetime of dedication to the beer industry.
During his years at the helm of Adolph Coors Company, Bill also
demonstrated his commitment to employees with a philosophy of
sharing. He believed in a family of employees. “We don’t believe in
walls,” he said. “We don’t believe in a ‘you’ and a ‘we’. We
believe in us. We believe in being friends. We’re in this damn
thing together. I am just one of 6,000 people here and I do 1/6,000
of the work, maybe less.”
One of the more interesting aspects of Bill’s many jobs at the
brewery is that of being an official beer taste tester. Bill
continued to taste test Coors beer until his 100th birthday – and
he was so good at his job he could tell where the beer had been
brewed!
Bill Coors. Father. Son. Uncle. Legend.
View source
version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181013005016/en/
Molson CoorsColin Wheeler,
303-927-2443colinwheeler@molsoncoors.com
Molson Coors Beverage (NYSE:TAP)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Molson Coors Beverage (NYSE:TAP)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024