Wally Amos, founder of Famous Amos cookies, dies at the age of 88.
After launching the Famous Amos bakery in 1975 the author and entrepreneur established an empire of cookies
Wallace “Wally” Amos, the entrepreneur and creator of Famous Amos cookies who later became a child’s advocate passed away on Tuesday in the age group of 88, according to his family.
“With his Panama hat, kazoo, and boundless optimism, Famous Amos was a great American success story, and a source of Black pride,” was the statement of his kids, Sarah, Michael, Gregory and Shawn Amos.
The day before, Amos was pronounced dead at the home of his located in Honolulu and his spouse, Carol and his children at their family’s side, the children of his said. Amos died of complications from dementia.
Amos founded The Famous Amos cookie empire and established his bakery in the year the year 1975 along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in which he sold chocolate chip cookies that were bite-sized in accordance with the company’s website using the original recipe of his family with high-quality ingredients.
The Famous Amos cookies took off according to the company states and was an Hollywood success story featuring musicians as well as Hollywood stars “singing the praises of the delicious cookies from a small bakery on Sunset”.
The children of his son said they believed that Amos “inspired a generation of entrepreneurs when he founded the world’s first cookie store” in the year 1975.
Although Amos was a great publicist but he was a difficult businessman and ultimately lost control of the business. Sarah Amos was his daughter. Sarah Amos, said that he quit the company because he didn’t wish to be just its face.
The loss of the business as well as the rights to his brand was personal and painful, his Son, Shawn Amos said: “The remainder of his life and the remainder of his professional pursuits were attempts to get him to, you know, reclaim that space.”
In the later years, Amos became a proprietor of a bakery known as Chip & Cookie in Hawaii in which Amos moved in 1977 after having previously been stationed there as a member of the US Air Force. Within his now defunct Hawaii store, Amos sold bite-sized cookies identical to those that he sold in The Famous Amos Hollywood store.
Amos was also the co-founder of Uncle Wally’s Muffin Co, in 1992. The company’s products are available in retail stores across the country. The muffin business, which is based in Shirley, New York, was founded in the beginning in 1992 as Uncle Noname Cookie Co, shortly after Amos had lost Famous Amos. Uncle Noname however, sank due to financial issues and debts with its contracted suppliers.
Amos claimed that fame did not really matter to him.
“Being famous is highly overrated anyway,” Amos said to his Associated Press in 2007.
Born to Tallahassee, Florida, in 1936, Amos moved to New York City at the age of 12 due to the divorce of his parents. He stayed with his aunt called Della Bryant, who taught him how to make chocolate chip cookies.
He then quit his high school in order to enter the Air Force after which he became an office clerk for the William Morris Agency, where the agency became an agent for talent. He worked with the Supremes Simon and Garfunkel as well as Marvin Gaye before taking out a loan of $25,000 to start his own cookie business.
It was his very first Black agent to enter the industry, Shawn Amos said.
Amos was actively involved in the promotion of reading. His store, for instance featured a reading area that was filled with donated books as well as Amos typically spent his Saturdays on a chair wearing a watermelon cap, reading to kids.
Sarah Amos recalled him reading to the children at Hanahauoli School, and he continued to do so after she left the elementary school that was small.
The high school dropout who was a student wrote eight books, served as the spokesperson for Literacy Volunteers of America for twenty-four years, and delivered motivational talks to companies and universities as well as other groups.
In honor of Amos’s legacy, Famous Amos, Famous Amos launched an initiative that helps small black-owned businesses by providing grants of $150,000 to help their growth. The initiative is called the Ingredients to Success according to the site of the company..
Amos was awarded numerous honors for his work with the community, including being awarded the Literacy Award presented by George HW Bush in the year 1991.
“Your greatest contribution to your country is not your signature straw hat in the Smithsonian, but the people you have inspired to learn to read,” Bush declared.
The year 1987 was the year Amos received the honor of being recognized as an Horatio Alger Award winner The award is presented for “exceptional leaders who have triumphed over adversity to achieve greatness” and to those whom “personify the American Dream and their life experiences are proof that, with perseverance and unwavering belief, anything is possible in our country through the free-enterprise system”.
According to the Horatio Alger Association website states that Amos was an unwavering believer in the benefits of a positive outlook. “When people fill their lives with love, positive energy, faith, giving, and enthusiasm, they will be a success,” Amos declared.
Through his life, Amos was married six times to five women according to his son Shawn explained, stating that Amos and Carol were separated but returned to each other, and later remarried.
“He loved love,” Sarah Amos said.
In an interview in 1991 interview in 1991 with Detroit Black Journal, Amos admitted that he had started baking cookies “just to make a living and to be happy doing what I was doing … I was so committed and so involved and so joyous about it.”
He went on to say: “I didn’t say hey, ‘I’m going to go in the cookie business and make a lot of money, sell a lot of cookies.’ I said, ‘I’m going to do something I like, the way I wanna do it, I’m gonna have fun doing it, I’m gonna share it with people and I’m going to do my best’ and I just did it.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting