Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Walter Staunton Jr. MACK
Walter Staunton Mack Jr (1895 - 1990), was a U.S. drink businessman and financier. His greatest achievement was as president of Pepsi-Cola Company from 1938 until 1951.
Philadelphia Daily News (PA) - March 19, 1990
Deceased Name: EX-PEPSI PREZ WALTER S. MACK, HAD HEART DISEASE
Walter S. Mack, who transformed the once little-known Pepsi-Cola Co. into the nation's second-largest-selling soft-drink maker, died yesterday at age 94 after a lengthy illness.
He died in his sleep at his New York home, where he had been recuperating
from a December bout with pneumonia and heart disease, said his son, Walter S. Mack Jr.
Mack became Pepsi's president in 1938, when the cola company was spun off
from New York candy maker Loft's Inc. At that time, Pepsi was selling to candy stores a syrup formulated by a North Carolina druggist in 1893.
Pepsi made little headway against Coca-Cola until Mack broke the cola giant's control of the name "cola" in a historic court battle in the late 1930s. Within three years, Pepsi was an international giant second only to Coca-Cola in sales.
After stepping down as president in 1951, Mack ran the Nedick's hot dog chain and later headed several other companies. He came out of retirement in his 80s to set up King-Cola Corp., which went bankrupt in 1981.
Mack graduated from Harvard in 1917 and volunteered for war service. In his autobiography, "No Time Lost," he recalled his naval duty at Newport, R.I., as "a continuous round . . . of cocktail parties, banquets, holiday balls, and especially coming-out parties for the debutantes."
After the war, Mack said he plunged into the investment business and Republican politics, "to get out and away from my family."
Copyright (c) 1990 Philadelphia Daily News
New York Times, The (NY) - March 19, 1990
Deceased Name: Walter S. Mack, Who Made Pepsi The No. 2 Cola Maker, Dies at 94
Walter S. Mack, the former president of Pepsi-Cola who made it the nation's No. 2 cola drink in the early 1940's, died of heart disease yesterday at his home in Manhattan. He was 94 years old.
Mr. Mack was a maverick financier and businessman with a knack for turning around ailing companies, and he became chief executive of more than a dozen. He was also an exuberant salesman who led the Pepsi-Cola Company from 1938 to 1951, establishing its soft drink as Coca-Cola's leading challenger by using inventive advertising and bold public service.
His greatest advertising success was his introduction of Pepsi's musical jingle: "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/Twelve full ounces, that's alot/Twice as much for a nickel, too/Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you."
When he first heard the 15-second quatrain, it was embedded in 45 seconds of a spoken commercial. He ordered aides to "clear away the spinach" and the jingle - and sales - took off around the world.
Annual College Scholarships
In a major civic promotion, he pioneered Pepsi's financing of 117 annual college scholarships to two students from each state plus 19 special grants to black students. He also began one-year on-the-job training for college graduates, annual national painting contests, three recreational clubs for New York City teen-agers and centers for military personnel in New York, Washington and San Francisco.
Some associates at Pepsi increasingly opposed such efforts, and he resigned to head several other companies, including the Nedick's chain and C&C Super, another soft-drink concern. In 1953, he was credited with being the first to put soft drinks in cans.
In 1978, at the age of 82, he came out of retirement and brought together a group of former cola-company executives to found the King Cola World Corporation to make a new cola. He was a vocal advocate for older workers and, in 1981, told a House committee, "Work keeps me alive, as it does a great many people."
The new cola company failed, but John W. Donlevy, its 54-year-old president, offered this tribute to Mr. Mack: "When I joined Walter, I figured that at 60 I'd hang it up. He changed me completely. He's so alert and has so much fun, you forget his age. Now I can't imagine not being involved with some business as long as I'm healthy."
Decades of Public Service
Mr. Mack's enthusiasms also included politics. He served as a Republican fund-raiser for the New York City mayoral campaigns of Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Presidential campaigns of Wendell Willkie, Thomas E. Dewey and Dwight D. Eisenhower. He also helped to raise money for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Mr. Mack earned many awards for decades of public service, particularly in his native New York City. He had been the treasurer and a trustee of Temple Emanu-El for 56 years.
Walter Staunton Mack was born in Manhattan on Oct. 19, 1895, the son of a textile merchant. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and, in 1917, from Harvard College. In World War I, he joined the Navy, earned an ensign's commission and served in the North Atlantic.
Over the decades, he was an officer of a wide range of companies, from consumer-products concerns to investment and mining corporations. He was a president of Bedford Mills, Phoenix Securities and Great American Minerals and a board chairman of United Cigar-Whelan Stores, Aminex Resources and Aminex Petroleum. His autobiography, "No Time Lost," was published in 1982.
Mr. Mack's wife Ruth died in 1986. Survivors include two sons, Anthony, of Los Angeles, and Walter Jr., of Manhattan; two daughters, Florence Ann Kelly of Manhattan and Alice M. Sawyer of Wilmington, Del.; eight grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
A memorial service will be held on Thursday at noon in the Beth-El chapel at Temple Emanu-El, Fifth Avenue at 65th Street.
Copyright 1990, The New York Times Company
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