Herbert David Kelleher (March 12, 1931 – January 3, 2019) was an American billionaire airline businessman and lawyer. He was the co-founder, later CEO, and chairman emeritus of Southwest Airlines until his death in 2019.
Contents
Early life
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 (cum laude) from New York University School of Law where he was a Root-Tilden Scholar.
Career
After clerking for a New Jersey Supreme Court justice, Kelleher moved to Texas intending to start a law firm or a business. He was a partner in Oppenheimer, Rosenberg, Kelleher & Wheatley, 1969–1981. Kelleher and one of his law clients, Texas businessman Rollin King, created the concept with banker John Parker that later became Southwest Airlines. An often retold founding myth claimed the business plan was written out on a cocktail napkin in a San Antonio restaurant, though Kelleher and King have both stated that there was no literal cocktail napkin. They originally devised a very simple plan of connecting the Texas Triangle with low-cost air service, patterned largely on California's Pacific Southwest Airlines. After incorporating the company initially as "Air Southwest Co." in 1967, Kelleher and King faced four years of setbacks and legal challenges from competitors that culminated in winning key cases before the Supreme Court of the United States in December 1970 and the Supreme Court of Texas in June 1971. The first flights finally took off on June 18, 1971.