Chuck Williams (author)
| Chuck Williams | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Charles Edward Williams October 2, 1915 Jacksonville, Florida, U.S. |
| Died | December 5, 2015 (aged 100) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | cookery author |
Charles Edward "Chuck" Williams (October 2, 1915 – December 5, 2015) was the American founder of the Williams-Sonoma company and author and editor of more than 100 books on the subject of cooking. Williams is credited for playing a major role in introducing French cookware into American kitchens through his retail and mail-order business. He turned 100 in October 2015 and died two months later on December 5, in San Francisco, California, United States.
Born in 1915 in Jacksonville, Florida, Williams learned to cook from his maternal grandmother, who had owned a restaurant in Lima, Ohio. When the Great Depression hit, his father's auto repair business failed, and the family moved to southern California. His father fared no better there and soon abandoned his wife, son and daughter. Eventually, Williams found work on a date farm near Palm Springs, Sniff's Date Gardens in Indio. The couple who owned it, Dana and Abagail Sniff, took him in and drove him to high school in the mornings while he spent the afternoons working at the date shop and grounds. Williams lived with the Sniffs for seven years until just after his graduation from high school. His sister died in 1933 from a brain injury, after being hit in the head with a baseball. His mother returned to Florida, and Williams finished school and moved to Los Angeles.
During World War II, he spent four years overseas as an airplane mechanic for Lockheed International, working on aircraft in India and East Africa. After the war, Williams returned to Los Angeles and one weekend, joined friends for golf in Sonoma. He fell in love with the town and moved there in 1947, starting a successful business as a building contractor.
Williams bought the Ralph Morse Hardware Store in Sonoma, California in 1953. Over the next few years, he gradually converted its stock from hardware to French cookware, filling a niche in the market as European cookware was difficult to find for purchase in America at the time. The concept was successful, and he moved his operations to San Francisco in 1958. More than a decade later, in 1971, Williams-Sonoma introduced its first mail-order cookware catalog. Soon after, the business began expanding to more locations and now includes over 600 stores nationwide. Chuck Williams sold Williams-Sonoma to Howard Lester and Jay McMahan in 1978 for $100,000. He served as chairman of the company until 1986, and he remained extensively involved with the company, overseeing merchandise selection, conducting public appearances and writing cookbooks, for the remainder of his life. The company went public on the in 1983.
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