My family and I are very proud to have our name associated with this great school—not only because it’s a terrific educational institution, but because we espouse similar values. My purpose today is to give you an appreciation of what Marriott values are and what they mean to me. The best way to do this is to share a little family and corporate history. They are both about the same.

The Marriott companies most people know and recognize today are: Marriott International, of which my brother, Bill, is the CEO and chairman; and Host Marriott, of which I am chairman. Both companies came from the original Marriott Corporation, which began as Hot Shoppes, Inc. My father, J. Willard Marriott, was the founder of it all. He was frequently asked, “What is the secret to your success?” He invariably responded that three elements were integral to his success: (1) being born right; (2) developing good habits; and (3) marrying right.

Being Born Right

My father had two things going for him at birth: he was born in the United States, and he had good genes. He was blessed to live in one of the few countries where, if you work hard and make reasonably intelligent decisions, you can become successful. I serve on the board of the National Restaurant Association with about ninety-five people who are very successful and well known in the business world. Almost every one of them started working as a dishwasher, table busser, or server in a restaurant and then worked up to management and often ownership. This great country in which we live gives each of us this opportunity.

Secondly, my father had good genes, and a lot of those genes came from his grandmother, Elizabeth Stewart. Elizabeth was born in Liverpool, England. She and her brother, William, were converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their family was very poor and gave little support to Elizabeth’s and William’s decision to join the Church and make the long, arduous trip to Zion, which was a fairly heavy expense in 1850. Elizabeth had one possession of value—a beautiful shawl she received from her mother—which she sold for enough money to book passage on a ship sailing from Liverpool to St. Louis, Missouri.

After arriving in St. Louis, William used his last few dollars to pay for his passage on a wagon train to Salt Lake City. Elizabeth had nothing left, so she worked for two years as a housekeeper to earn enough money to join a wagon train. Of course, in those days when you joined a wagon train, you didn’t actually ride in a wagon—you walked alongside it. Unfortunately, she had only one pair of shoes. She wrote in her diary, “I would not want to walk down the streets of Salt Lake City in worn-out shoes,” so she took those shoes, put them in her bag and walked barefoot so she would have good shoes when she got to Salt Lake City. She was a strong-willed woman!

After her trek across the plains, Elizabeth lived with her brother in Kaysville, Utah. Shortly after she arrived there, she was standing in the doorway of his home, looking out across a field, and saw a giant of a man on horseback coming toward her. She said he was not very handsome, but the Spirit whispered to her, “This is going to be your husband.” I don’t think she was especially happy to hear that. His name was John Marriott, and about three days later he approached her and said, “I’ve got the feeling you and I are to be married,” and so they were wed shortly thereafter. One of the products of that marriage was Hyrum Willard Marriott, my grandfather.

Developing Good Habits

My father, J. Willard, grew up on his father’s farm, just west of Ogden, in the small town of Marriott, Utah, which was founded by his grandfather, John Marriott. As a young boy, he quickly learned how to work hard and take responsibility. He and his seven brothers and sisters had to take care of the crops and the livestock. As the eldest son, my dad had primary responsibility for the sheep and cattle. He spent so much of his time during his teen years tending them on the farm and herding them on the ranges of Nevada and Utah that he never graduated from high school. He was called on a mission at age nineteen, and that provided him the welcome opportunity to leave the farm and spend two years on the East Coast, preaching the gospel from Washington, D.C., to Maine.

When my dad returned to Utah, he was able to talk his way into being accepted at Weber College without having a high school diploma. His second year of college is exemplary of the kind of worker he was. He was the salesman and writer for the newspaper, the manager and stock boy for the bookstore, an English teacher, and senior class president.

After graduating from Weber, my father transferred to the University of Utah and worked in a food-catering business with Franklin D. Richards, who was to be one of his lifelong friends. During summers at the University of Utah, he earned his living selling black wool long underwear produced by a Utah woolen mill. Dad would go to the Northwest logging camps and sell this underwear for $20 a pair. That was a lot of money back then, so he developed a special selling strategy. He would find two mean looking lumberjacks and challenge them saying: “Each of you take a leg of this pair of underwear. If you can pull this underwear apart, I’ll give you a free pair. If you can’t, you’ve got to buy it.” The loggers would then have a tug-of-war but could never tear the underwear apart. Dad earned more than $2,000 in commissions during a single summer and was the most productive salesman in the company.