Anonymous ID: 9bae86 Sept. 21, 2018, 1:27 p.m. No.3125703   🗄️.is 🔗kun

http://www.legacy.com/ns/john-hammons-obituary/165020479

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — John Q. Hammons, a prominent hotel developer and southwest Missouri philanthropist who rose from a poor Depression-era childhood to build a national real estate empire, has died. He was 94.

 

Hammons, who actively led his company well into his 80s, died peacefully Sunday at a nursing home in Springfield, said Sheri Davidson Smith, a spokeswoman for John Q. Hammons Hotels & Resorts.

 

Hammons' first business — a company that sold mortar-less bricks — went bust in the late 1940s, saddling him with debt. He paid off that debt after two years and recovered to build housing subdivisions in southwest Missouri over the next decade before purchasing 10 Holiday Inn franchises with a partner in 1958 from the company's founder.

 

He went on to build 200 hotels nationwide, including Embassy Suites, Marriotts, Radissons and Holiday Inns. Hammons also developed an expansive real estate portfolio associated with those hotels of golf courses, restaurants, convention centers, a casino and riverboat gambling. He avoided big-city locations in favor of properties in college towns and state capitals.