Up for auction "Southwest Airlines" Co-Founder Herb Kelleher Signed TLS.

ES-9760

Herbert David Kelleher (March

12, 1931 – January 3, 2019) was an American billionaire

airline executive and lawyer. He was the co-founder, later CEO, and chairman emeritus of Southwest Airlines until his death in 2019. Kelleher was born in Camden, New Jersey, on March 12, 1931, and

raised in Audubon, New Jersey, where he graduated from Haddon Heights High School. He earned a bachelor's degree from Wesleyan University where he was an Olin

Scholar and where his major was English and his minor Philosophy, and a Juris Doctor

from New York University where

he was a Root-Tilden Scholar.

At Wesleyan he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. On a blind date

at a basketball game, he met Joan Negley who was a student at Connecticut College in New London. The two got married, and Joan

was the person who introduced him to the state of

Texas, which he also fell in love with, saying "The greatest

business decision I ever made ...was the move to Texas." Kelleher was known for getting

little sleep and for his affinity for Wild Turkey bourbon and Philip Morris cigarettes. He was diagnosed

with prostate cancer in 1999, and underwent radiation

therapy. He died on January 3, 2019 in Dallas at the age of 87.