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Milestones & Memories
Presented to Mary Ann Thielmann Williams
 Fifty years ago, Mary Ann Thielmann Williams and
her husband, Verne, visted her brother, Clarence Petrie and his wife,
Anita, in Wisconsin. Petrie, owner of a popular restaurant, had
recently meet the Colonel at a convention in Chicago and decided to
sell Kentucky Fried Chicken from a takeout counter at the back of his
establishment. Petrie convinced the two to open their own KFC takeout
restaurant back home in Whittier, Calif. In 1960, they opened a
takeout-only KFC – the first KFC of its kind in Southern California.
Verne Thielmann worked very hard on the business until 1982, when he
suffered a fatal heart attack. At that time, Thielmann Williams took
over the business. She eventually built two new restaurants in Whittier
and remodeled one in Pico Rivera, Calif. Her son, Mike, and son-in-law,
Dick Hopkins, husband of her daughter Sheila who passed away in 1998,
help with the business, as do two great managers, Carlos Salcido and
John Plascencia and many good team members. Just recently, the family
business saw its highest-ever volume in one of her restaurants.
Thielmann
Williams remembers the time the Colonel visited her restaurant
unannounced. “He took the time to show us how to cook KFC the correct
way,” she says. “These were great operations facility reviews.” She
also fondly remembers dancing with the Colonel in Salt Lake City at a
city park at a KFC convention. |
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