This story first appeared in °®¶¹app on May 1, 1998.
Somehow, you expect him to bound into the room, all smiles and animation, patting people on the back, going from table to table, asking how the food is, and urging patrons to enjoy.
After nine years doing commercials for Wendy's, that's the image Dave Thomas has developed.
Now, meet the real Dave Thomas -- the one who showed up Thursday at the new Wendy's on North Anthony Boulevard.
He moved slowly and smiled little, though he was cordial, saying hello to the crowd, made up mostly of reporters and Wendy's executives, who seemed nervous.
In short order, you remember: Dave Thomas isn't an actor, so don't expect a show. He's senior chairman of Wendy's International, a multinational company with 6,700 restaurants, 200,000 employees and $7 billion in sales annually.
Sometimes even he has to remind people of that.
But he's also humble about his 51-year restaurant career.
Surrounded by cameras from three TV stations, two newspapers, one wire service, a public relations company and a high school class, Thomas was asked whether he ever thought he'd be a celebrity.
``I'm not a celebrity,'' he said. ``I'm a hamburger cook.''
The answer tells a lot about the former Fort Wayne resident. He's not bubbly but he's not big-headed either, even though he has reason to be.
Thomas started in the restaurant business when he was a schoolboy, busing tables at the Hobby House, 230 E. Wayne St. He was later named assistant manager at the Hobby Ranch House at Anthony Boulevard and Crescent Avenue, where he met Col. Harland Sanders, who was frequently there promoting his chicken.
Thomas mastered the fried chicken business and moved to Columbus, Ohio, in 1962.
It was in Columbus, bankrolled by the profits from a successful venture in Kentucky Fried Chicken, that he launched his hamburger chain in 1969, naming it after a daughter born in Fort Wayne.
Thomas' chief mission Thursday was to give a speech at Big Brothers/Big Sisters' annual evening fund-raising dinner. But he nevertheless dropped in a few hours early to visit the new Wendy's restaurant, which opened six weeks ago on the site of the old Hobby Ranch House, where he learned the nuts and bolts of the business.
Who would have known, back then, when he was putting in 70- and 80-hour weeks, cooking barbecue, scrubbing grills, developing the drive-through concept and perfecting his own philosophy of restaurateuring ,that he would launch what would become the world's third-largest restaurant chain.
Back then, there were times when he felt he wasn't getting ahead, he said.
But he was fortunate. He had mentors -- good mentors -- in Phil Clauss, owner of the Hobby House restaurants, and Sanders.
``Mentoring is so important,'' he said.
Thomas doesn't hold himself up as an example to young people, though. He dropped out of high school after his sophomore year to work full time in the restaurant business. He lived for a time in a room at the YMCA.
Get an education, he advised. Don't follow his example, he said.
Missing out on an education was dumb, he said.
Not until 1993 did he get his GED, receiving it from a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., high school, where the graduating class voted him most likely to succeed.
