This is the way I heard it.

After 89 extraordinary years, Fred was dead, and his kids were headed to the funeral home

to pay their respects and honor their father's final wish.

Along the way they stopped at a wall green to pick up some snacks.

After a brief debate concerning the merits of salt and vinegar versus sour cream and onion,

the decision was made to go with the original.

And so Fred's children resumed their journey to the funeral home armed with potato chips.

Fred loved his kids, but his passion was snacks.

Many listening now are too young to recall the crisis that very nearly destroyed the junk

food industry several decades ago.

Broken potato chips.

It's true, people were fed up with bags of chips that had been reduced to thousands

of tiny fragments on their way to supermarket shelves as the outrage grew.

Industry leaders began to panic, something had to be done.

So in 1966, Proctor and Gamble called in Fred.

Fred held a PhD in organic chemistry and a natural fascination with all things edible.

He had designed freeze-dried ice cream and a vast variety of frying oils used in just

about every kind of mass-produced food, if anyone could figure out how to keep potato

chips in one piece it was Fred.

But after some careful thought and rudimentary prototypes, Fred realized that a better container

would first require a better chip.

What was needed was more uniformity, something that could be packed more efficiently and thereby

...