Marines have repeatedly come home from their military service to make the world a better place through what they learned. These entrepreneurs have touched everything from the overnight delivery service to Hollywood, technology, and a lot of pizza pies.
You likely use their services either daily or weekly and do not even know who started the company. These people have possibly influenced your life without you even realizing it.
Also Read: ‘The Grand Old Man of the Marine Corps’ served 38 years as Commandant
Here are five successful businesspeople who served in the Marine Corps.
Frederick W. Smith
Smith served two tours in Vietnam before coming home to create Federal Express, later shortened to FedEx. He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, and attended Yale before going into the Marines.
Smith’s first tour in Vietnam was as an infantry platoon commander, and his second tour was as a forward air controller (FAC). He received the Silver Star, Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts during his service in the Corps. He founded FedEx on June 18, 1971, and began offering service to 25 cities with a fleet of 14 Falcon 20 jets.
Smith went to great lengths to keep the company afloat, including using the company’s last $5,000 to gamble in blackjack. He turned that money into $27,000 and covered the company’s fuel costs for another week. Smith also invested in films, financing such movies as “The Blind Side,” “Sicario,”and “12 Strong.”
Ron Meyer
Meyer has been an inside Hollywood mover and shaker for more than five decades. Meyer grew up in Los Angeles to parents who had escaped from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. He served in the Marine Corps in the early 1960s in the infantry at Camp Pendleton in California, then worked for talent agent Paul Kohner from 1964 to 1970 and at William Morris from 1970 to 1975.
Meyer founded Creative Artists Agency with four other William Morris agents in 1975. He co-led the firm, whose clients included Sylvester Stallone, Barbra Streisand, Meryl Streep, Michael Douglas, and Donald Sutherland.
Universal Studios hired Meyer to serve as its president and chief operating officer. From 1995 to 2013, he oversaw the worldwide operations for film, theme parks, and the physical studio of 15,000 employees. NBC Universal promoted Meyer to vice chairman of NBC Universal, and he remained in that post until 2020.
During his tenure, Universal produced such films as “The Fast and the Furious,” “Erin Brockovich,” “Gladiator,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “United 93,” “Apollo 13,” and “Ted.”
Bob Parsons
Parsons has spent the majority of his career as an entrepreneur in technology, first with Parsons Technology—which produced accounting software— and then with GoDaddy with internet domains and web hosting.
Parsons comes from humble beginnings and joined the Marine Corps during his senior year of high school. He was inducted into boot camp and then shipped off to Vietnam with the infantry. He served with the 26th Marine Regiment in Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines in Quảng Nam Province. Parsons was wounded in action and received the Combat Action Ribbon, Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and Purple Heart. Post-service, he graduated magna cum laude from the University of Baltimore with a degree in accounting.
He founded Parsons Technology in 1984 and sold the company to Intuit Inc. for $64 million. He founded what became GoDaddy in 1997 and eventually sold the company to private equity investors in 2011. Parsons now runs YAM Worldwide, which is the focus of his entrepreneurship operations in golf, real estate, power sports, marketing, innovation, and philanthropy.
He owns and operates Harley-Davidson and multi-brand motorcycle dealerships, his own golf company—Parsons Extreme Golf— and real-estate holdings in Arizona. He and his wife, Renee, operate the Bob and Renee Parsons Foundation, which has donated more than $10 million annually since its inception to charitable causes.
Tom Monaghan
Tom Monaghan founded Domino’s Pizza in 1960 with less than $80 in his checking account and having only completed high school and a tour in the Marines. He used grit, tenacity, and common-sense leadership to beat the odds and made Domino’s a household name.
He also transformed the pizza business with a 30-minute guarantee for delivery, which was unheard-of at the time. Monaghan served in the Corps from 1956 to 1959 in the infantry in Okinawa, Japan. Post-service, he hitchhiked across the country from Camp Pendleton to Michigan, meeting interesting characters along the way.
Once he was back in Ann Arbor and after attending the University of Michigan, he and his brother James bought a small pizza store named DomiNick’s in Ypsilanti, Michigan, for $900. After a brief period, James left the business and Tom traded him a VW Beetle for his brother’s share.
Tom Monaghan focused on delivery to college campuses and developed a stackable box for delivery. The college campus-focused model spread across the U.S., and the company grew to the point that, by the mid-1980s, nearly three Domino’s franchises were opening daily. Monaghan sold a 93% stake in the company to Bain Capital for $1 billion in 1998.
At one point, he owned the Detroit Tigers, who won the World Series in 1984 during his ownership. Monaghan opened Ave Maria University and the Ave Maria School of Law, both Catholic-based institutions, in their own town in Florida, Ave Maria. Monaghan donates to charitable causes worldwide.
Mike Ilitch
Ilitch founded Little Caesars pizza and owned the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, of which he bought the latter from fellow pizza baron and Marine Tom Monaghan. Ilitch grew up in Detroit. He was always a hometown fan of the Tigers. In fact, Ilitch played minor-league baseball in the Tigers’ organization after returning from the Marine Corps in the 1950s.
Mike married his wife Marian in 1955 and started Little Caesars pizza in 1959. He and his wife continually grew the company throughout the ensuing decades, and he later formed Ilitch Holdings Inc. to combine all of their business interests. He bought the Red Wings in 1982 and the Tigers in 1992. The Red Wings won four Stanley Cups during Ilitch’s ownership.
Ilitch created Ilitch Charities to invest in communities and set up the Little Caesars Veterans Program to provide honorably discharged veterans with a business opportunity when they transition from service or seek a career change. He paid Rosa Parks’ rent from 1994 until her death in 2005, which allowed her to relocate from a troubled area of Detroit to a safer neighborhood as well. He served with the best and continually gave back during his lifetime.
