Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 7, Issue 10, October 2003

Copyright 2003 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

Huskies say Happy Birthday to Dick's on Oct. 11

By JAMES BUSH

Dick's Drive-In, a North End institution for five decades, will be honored before the University of Washington-Nevada football game on Saturday, Oct. 11 as Husky Stadium celebrates "Dick's Drive-In Day."

Co-founder Richard "Dick" Spady will autograph copies of the newly published Dick's 50th Anniversary Memory Book at the Husky Huddle pregame event in the Dempsey Center (UW practice facility) from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. From there, it's off to the stadium, where the Husky Band will perform a special pregame tribute to the famed burger maker.

Husky fans can get two-for-one tickets to the game by printing out the coupon on the Dick's Web site: www.ddir.com.

The memory books will also be available for purchase at Dick's locations after Oct. 11. Jim Spady, company vice president (and son of Dick himself), says the book updates a similar volume published for the company's 40th anniversary. "It will contain all of the memories in the 40th anniversary book, supplemented by all the memories from the last 10 years," says Jim.

Proceeds from book sales will go to the Dick's Change for Charity program, which has raised approximately $75,000 for local non-profit groups in the last five years.

Founded as a business in 1953 by Dick Spady, Warren Ghormley, and Dr. "Tom" Thomas (Spady bought out his partners in 1991), the first Dick's Drive-In opened on North 45th Street in Wallingford Jan. 28, 1954.

The first challenge they faced had to do with onions, recalls Dick Spady. "The first day we opened up we put onions on all our hamburgers," he says. "By the end of the day we had onions all over the grill, all over the floor, every place so the next day we changed it."

From Day Two to the present, Dick's customers get their onions on the side.

The second challenge was snow: In the first week of operation, a heavy snowstorm paralyzed traffic in Wallingford, so the restaurant closed for two days.

Even getting the first restaurant built proved a chore, Dick recalls. The partners had found a builder who might be willing to put up half the construction money. Without his participation, the project simply wouldn't happen. When Dick asked for his final decision, the builder said: "My attorney thinks it's foolish and my bankers says it's risky and my accountant doesn't like it and my insurance guy either."

"Well, my heart just dropped down," Dick remembers. But the builder didn't say no.

"You know," said the builder, "if I did everything they told me to do, I'd be working for them in six months."

Jim Spady remembers the perks of growing up as the son of Dick, riding in his father's blue 1961 Thunderbird as he toured the chain's restaurants. "I remember meeting all the different managers and everybody being very nice to me and, of course, getting as much Dick's burgers, shakes and ice cream as I wanted."

Oh sure, Jim, rub it in.

When Jim quit work as an attorney to join the family business (to become "a burger man," as his father would say), he remembers his children were thrilled. But, when they came to visit him at work one day, they were disappointed to find him sitting at a desk in the company office they thought he was working at the restaurant making burgers and fries!

There has been one sad note to the celebration the death of founding partner Warren Ghormley on July 19, just 11 days shy of his 85th birthday. He and Dick Spady first met at Pearl Harbor in 1943, when both were with the Navy Seabees (construction units). As the operating partners, no decision was made unless Dick and "Ghorm" were in agreement. And their first big decision was to whether to franchise their drive-ins on a regional basis or simply to focus on the Seattle market.

"We didn't want to travel around," he says. "I'm a homeboy and so was Ghorm. We decided we would not franchise, we'd stay where we are and try to gain the respect of the community in the long haul."

And there's 50 years of evidence that says they made the right call.