Franchiser Shepard dies at 87

Evansville Courier & Press:

Richard Shepard, the father of Indiana Chief Justice Randall Shepard and one of the men responsible for bringing the first McDonald’s franchises to Evansville, has died.

The 87-year-old died Sunday in Fort Myers, Fla. He had suffered from lung cancer.

Richard Shepard and Don Hazeltine opened their first restaurant in 1959 on what is now South Kentucky Avenue, a location that is no longer open.

Today there are more than 30,000 McDonald’s in more than 100 countries, but when the two entrepreneurs opened their first Evansville restaurant, there were less than 100 franchises nationwide.

“Today, you can open a McDonald’s in any town in the country, and people have heard of it,” Hazeltine said in 1978. “Back then not many people had ever heard of McDonald’s.”

Both men told the Evansville Courier in 1978 that many factors contributed to their choice of opening in Evansville, including its climate (McDonald’s was a drive-in restaurant with no seating until the mid-1960s), its size and Indiana’s lack of a sales tax at the time.

The pair graduated as part of the first class of Hamburger University, the McDonald’s management training center.