100th anniversary of the birth of Nashville's most accomplished entrepreneur

A look at the life of Jack Massey

Email | Print By Bill Carey

Jack C. Massey, arguably the most remarkable businessman in Nashville history, would have been 100 years old today.

Massey, who died in 1990, is the only American to have taken three separate companies to the New York Stock Exchange (Hospital Corporation of America, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Winner’s Corp.). He was the original president of Nashville’s Baptist Hospital (from 1948 until 1960); founded the venture capital company Massey-Burch Capital Corp. along with his much younger partner Lucius Burch III; and was one of the chief owners of Nashville City Bank, which was taken over by Dominion Bankshares of Roanoke, Va., in 1986.

Massey’s achievements are especially notable when one considers that he was born in virtual poverty in rural Georgia. He also did not get involved in any of the three companies he took to the “Big Board” until late in life; from 1930 until 1964 he was the owner of a drug store chain and surgical supply business in Nashville.

Massey received many kudos during his life, and was in 1987 named a member of the Fortune magazine U. S. Business Hall of Fame. However, his most important contribution to Nashville was probably his role in starting HCA.

There is no question that HCA was and is Nashville’s most important health care company; dozens of other healthcare companies in Nashville were founded by people who had previously worked at HCA. “The legacy that Massey left for this town was with Hospital Corporation of America,” James C. (Jimmy) Bradford, formerly of J. C. Bradford & Co. recently said. “HCA is the biggest company in town and medical services is the biggest industry in town and these companies are all over this place. You don’t necessarily hear about them but there’s a hell of a lot of them around here, and that’s made all the difference in the world.”

The Nashville Health Care Council, a Chamber of Commerce-related organization, today estimates that there are 300 health care companies in Nashville that operated on a multi-state level or larger. These companies operate a total of 2,400 facilities outside of Nashville and employ 310,000 people outside of Nashville and 86,000 inside the city.

Massey was one of four people who founded HCA – the other three being Dr. Thomas Frist Sr. (now deceased); Dr. Thomas Frist Jr. (now chairman of the HCA board); and Henry Hooker (who left HCA in 1969, a year after it was founded). Although there has been a lot of debate over the years about who was the most important of the four founders, there is no question that Massey was the one with the most business experience when HCA was founded in 1968.

Massey’s birthday is being recognized at the Jack C. Massey Graduate School of Business at Belmont University. In fact, it was largely under Massey’s influence that Belmont has such a business program; he and several of his family members made donations that made the school possible. “We are having cake in front of his bust to acknowledge his birthday and how much he meant to the school,” said Cindy Painter, director of external relations for the school.

The writer of this article, Bill Carey, the author of Fortunes, Fiddles and Fried Chicken: A Nashville Business History, currently is working on a biography of Jack Massey that is being underwritten by Massey's daughter, Barbara Massey Rogers.