Joseph Coors, Sr. (November 12, 1917 – March 15, 2003), was the grandson of brewer Adolph Coors and president of Coors Brewing Company.

Early life and education

Coors was born on November 12, 1917, in Golden, Colorado, to Alice May Kistler (1885–1970) and Adolph Coors II. His two older brothers were Adolph Coors III, born in 1915, and William Coors, born in 1916. Coors attended Cornell University, where he graduated in 1939 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. Two years later, in 1940, Coors earned and his master's degree at Cornell. As a Cornell University student, his brother, Adolph Coors III, and his cousin, Dallas Morse Coors, were his classmates, and all three were inducted into both Kappa Alpha Society and the Quill and Dagger honor society at the university.

Career

After graduation, he began work in the Coors Porcelain Co., the porcelain business that helped the company survive Prohibition. With his brother William Coors (whose desks were located only one foot apart), Joseph refined the cold-filtered beer manufacturing system and began America's first large-scale recycling program by offering one-cent returns on Coors aluminum cans. He served one term as a regent of the University of Colorado from 1967 to 1972 and attempted to quell what he considered to be campus radicalism during the Vietnam War. He was president of Coors from 1977 to 1985 and as chief operating officer from 1980 to 1988. Brewery Workers Local 366 in Golden, Colorado, struck the Coors plant in August 1977. Coors continued brewery operations and replaced the striking workers who stayed out. The new workers voted to decertify the union in December 1978, officially ending the strike. The strike and decertification caused a 10-year boycott of Coors by the AFL-CIO. In the aftermath of the strike, Coors required new employees to take lie detector tests, which were discontinued in August 1986. In 1977, after a regional agreement prevented the movement of toxic aluminum waste from aluminum can production across adjacent state borders, Coors set up the Mountain States Legal Foundation, headed by local lawyer James G. Watt to fight the environmental constraints in the courts. Watt later became U.S. Secretary of the Interior, and appointed local attorney Anne Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency to dismantle toxic waste disposal laws, causing an outcry that got her sacked by Reagan after 22 months, after which Watt was forced to resign for politically insensitive remarks. Coors was also known to have privately donated $65,000 to buy a light cargo plane for the Contras' effort in Nicaragua during Reagan's presidency. That donation went through National Security Council adviser Oliver North.

Politics

Coors was perhaps best known for his hard-right politics and his support of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, whom he first met in Palm Springs, California in 1967. His brother William Coors once described him as "a little bit right of Attila the Hun". A founding member of The Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank in 1973 along with Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner Coors provided $250,000 to cover its first year budget and $300,000 annually thereafter. He was also involved with the founding of the Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, the Council for National Policy, and Television News Inc., a syndicated news service for television stations. He was a member of Ronald Reagan's Kitchen Cabinet after helping finance Reagan's political career as governor of California and U.S. president, and was later nominated by Reagan to sit on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Marriage

Coors married Edith Holland "Holly" Hanson (Holly Coors) (1920–2009) in 1941 and had five sons, Joseph "Joe Jr." (1942–2016),, Jeffrey "Jeff", Peter "Pete" (born 1946), Grover and John. He divorced Holly in 1987 after 46 years of marriage. His son Jeff described him as an adulterer and a sinner. He married Anne Elizabeth Drotning in 1988.

Sons of Joe and Holly

Joe Sr. and Holly had 28 grandchildren, and 24 great-grandchildren at the time of Holly's death in 2009.

Death

Coors died in Rancho Mirage, California, in 2003 after a three-month battle with lymphatic cancer.

General references

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