Founder of the biscuit company “Famous Amos” dies

Honolulu — Wallace “Wally” Amos, the founder of the cookie empire that bore his name and made it famous and who later championed children's literacy, has died. He was 88 years old.

Amos founded the famous cookie empire Famous Amos and eventually lost ownership of the company – as well as the rights to use the catchy Amos name. In his later years, he became the owner of a cookie shop called Chip & Cookie in Hawaii, where he moved in 1977.

He died Tuesday at his home in Honolulu, surrounded by his wife, Carol, his children said. He died from complications of dementia, they said.

“With his Panama hat, his kazoo and his boundless optimism, Famous Amos was a great American success story and a source of black pride,” said a statement from his children Sarah, Michael, Gregory and Shawn Amos.

He was married six times to five women, said his son Shawn, explaining that he and Carol separated, got back together and then remarried.

“He loved love,” said Sarah Amos.

They said their father “inspired a generation of entrepreneurs when he founded the world's first cookie shop on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975.”

He was stationed in Hawaii with the Air Force and Famous Amos later enabled him to make the place his home.

Sarah Amos, who was born in Hawaii, remembers her father flying back and forth to the U.S. mainland at 4 a.m. and taking business calls.

“It's hard to run a business and work with people on the mainland when you're in Hawaii,” she said. “But he made the sacrifice.”

Although Wally Amos was a great promoter, he struggled as a businessman and eventually lost control of the company. He left because he didn't want to just be its figurehead, Sarah Amos said.

The subsequent loss of the company and the right to use his name was a deeply painful and personal matter for Shawn Amos. “The rest of his life and his subsequent professional activities were limited to attempts to get him to reclaim that space,” he said.

Wally Amos also co-founded Uncle Wally's Muffin Co., whose products are available in stores nationwide. But Amos said fame never really meant much to him.

“Being famous is highly overrated anyway,” Amos told the Associated Press in 2007.

His muffin company, based in Shirley, NY, was originally founded as Uncle Noname Cookie Co. in 1992, a few years after Amos lost Famous Amos, which still frequently uses his name on its products.

Amos had said that the Famous Amos cookies sold today were not his cookies, which contained lots of chocolate, real butter and pure vanilla extract.

“You can't compare machine-made cookies to handmade cookies,” he told AP. “It's like comparing a Rolls Royce to a Volkswagen.”

However, Uncle Noname failed due to debts and problems with its contract manufacturers.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 1996, gave up cookie production and focused on muffin production, at the suggestion of Amos' business partner Lou Avignone.

At his now-closed Hawaii Cookie Shop, he sold bite-sized cookies similar to those he first sold at the Famous Amos Hollywood store.

Amos was also involved in promoting reading. For example, his store had a reading room with dozens of donated books, and Amos usually spent Saturdays sitting in a rocking chair, wearing a watermelon hat, reading to children.

Sarah Amos remembered him reading to the children at Hanahauʻoli School and continuing to do so after she graduated from the small elementary school.

The former high school dropout wrote eight books, served as a spokesperson for the Literacy Volunteers of America organization for 24 years, and gave motivational speeches to companies, universities, and other groups.

Amos has received numerous awards for his volunteer work, including the Literacy Award from President George HW Bush in 1991.

“Your greatest contribution to your country is not your straw hat on display in the Smithsonian Museum, but the people who inspired you to learn to read,” Bush said.

In one of his books, Man With No Name: Turn Lemons Into Lemonade, Amos explained how he lost Famous Amos before it was sold to a Taiwanese company for $63 million in 1991. Despite good sales, the company began making losses in 1985, so Amos brought in outside investors.

“The new owners kept grabbing more and more of my share until I suddenly found that I had lost all of my shares in the company I had founded,” Amos wrote. It wasn't long before the company changed hands four times.

Sarah Amos said he didn't bake for about two years after splitting up with Famous Amos. After rediscovering his love of baking, he founded Hawaiian company Chip & Cookie in 1991.

Amos was born in Tallahassee, Florida, and moved to New York City at the age of 12 because of his parents' divorce. He lived with an aunt, Della Bryant, who taught him how to bake chocolate chip cookies.

He later dropped out of high school to join the Air Force before working as a postal clerk at the William Morris Agency. There he became a talent agent, working with The Supremes, Simon & Garfunkel and Marvin Gaye before borrowing $25,000 to start his cookie business.

He was the first black agent in the business, Shawn Amos said.

Shawn and Sarah said it wasn't until after their parents were born that they realized the importance of chocolate chip cookies to their family.

“When we first baked cookies with our kids, we realized that this is actually a family affair,” Shawn said. “It's a gift from him. It's part of our heritage.”