Wendell Cherry

Wendell Cherry (September 25, 1935 – July 16, 1991) was an American lawyer, entrepreneur, art collector and patron. The company he co-founded, Humana, grew under his leadership to become the largest hospital operator in the United States. In addition, he built one of the most important art collections in the country in the 1980s.

Cherry was born in 1935 in Horse Cave, a rural community in Kentucky, to a grocery wholesaler, Layman S. Cherry, and his wife, Geneva (born Spillman). His siblings were Ruth Ann, Layman Jr. and Sue Allen Cherry. In Horse Cave, he attended Caverna High School before moving to Lexington at the University of Kentucky. He studied business administration and graduated in 1957. He graduated with a Bachelor of Laws in 1959. During this time he worked as chief editor of the trade magazine Kentucky Law Journal. Then he taught business administration at the University of Louisville and worked as an attorney in Louisville. There he met in 1960 his future business partner and longtime friend David A. Jones.

Cherry first married Mary Elizabeth Baird. They had four children: Angela, Alison, Andrew and Hagan. In his second marriage, he married interior designer Dorothy Morton (née O'Connell), who brought three children into the marriage. The couple lived in Louisville and New York.

In 1961, Cherry and Jones founded the company Extendicare Inc. in Louisville. They initially operated a nursing home in Kentucky, the other institutions of its kind followed in many other US states. Cherry acted first as president of the company, then as deputy chairman of the board. The company expanded later in the hospital sector and has grown to become the largest hospital operator in the US. At the initial public launch of the company in January 1968, the issue price per share was eight and dollars and rose within ten months to 50 dollars.

In 1972, they separated the company from their now 41 nursing homes, renamed the Humana in 1974. Under the direction of Cherry, the company increased in the 1980s in the health insurance market. The number of hospitals operated by Humana rose to about 90 and the annual turnover to over 2.5 billion dollars. For the construction of the new company headquarters in Louisville, Humana commissioned the architect Michael Graves, whose Humana Building, a skyscraper was opened, in the style of postmodernism, in 1985.

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