MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) – Fred Smith and his fellow U.S. Marines appear ready for combat in the photograph the FedEx founder kept on his desk.
“He was so proud of his Marine experience and his Marine engagement for his whole life,” said Jack Sammons, General Chairman of the 2025 FedEx St. Jude Championship.
Smith died in Memphis on June 21 at the age of 80.
The tournament will present a tribute to Smith at 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 9 with a flyover of a FedEx Boeing 777 jet, with the initials FWS painted on the bottom of the plane.
The U.S. Military will present a flyover honoring Smith at a future date when Smith’s remains are laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
“The tournament will stop for one minute and we’ll have a moment of silence for Fred, and about that time we intend to have a flyover with FedEx aircraft,” Sammons said.
The tournament has commissioned a memorial pin in the shape of a tail wing in FedEx purple.
The FWS pin(FedEx St. Jude Championship)
“The tail is what provides stability to a flying aircraft,” Sammons explained.
The initials FWS for Frederick Wallace Smith will appear on the pins to be worn by all the PGA Tour pros who qualify for the first stop of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, their caddies, 1,700 tournament volunteers and the tournament staff.
Smith served as a platoon leader on his first tour of duty in Vietnam in 1966, straight out of Yale University and then Company Commander (K Company 3rd Battalion 5th Marine Regiment K/3/5).
Smith was promoted to the rank of Captain in Vietnam and had such affection for what he learned in the Marines, he often signed internal communications to his FedEx top brass as “Captain Smith.”
In his two tours of duty, Smith received the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts.
Read Smith’s Silver Star Citation Here:
The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to First Lieutenant Frederick Wallace Smith, United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action while serving as Commanding Officer of Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division in connection with operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On the morning of 27 May 1968, while conducting a search and destroy operation, Company K became heavily engaged with a North Vietnamese Army battalion occupying well-entrenched emplacements on Gò Nổi Island in Quang Nam Province. As Lieutenant Smith led his men in an aggressive assault upon the enemy positions, the North Vietnamese force launched a determined counterattack, supported by mortars, on the Marines’ left flank. Unhesitatingly rushing through the intense hostile fire to the position of heaviest contact, Lieutenant Smith fearlessly removed several casualties from the hazardous area and, shouting words of encouragement to his men, directed their fire upon the advancing enemy soldiers, successfully repulsing the hostile attack. Moving boldly across the fire-swept terrain to an elevated area, he calmly disregarded repeated North Vietnamese attempts to direct upon him as he skillfully adjusted artillery fire and air strikes upon the hostile positions to within fifty meters of his own location and continued to direct the movement of his unit. Accurately assessing the confusion that supporting arms was causing among the enemy soldiers, he raced across the fire-swept terrain to the right flank of his company and led an enveloping attack on the hostile unit’s weakest point, routing the North Vietnamese unit and inflicting numerous casualties. His aggressive tactics and calm presence of min [sic] under fire inspired all who observed him and were instrumental in his unit, accounting for the capture of two hostile soldiers as well as numerous documents and valuable items of equipment. By his courage, aggressive leadership and unfaltering devotion to duty at great personal risk, Lieutenant Smith upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and of the United States Naval Service.”[21]
Since Smith’s passing, Sammons says he’s been inundated with stories of Smith’s service in Vietnam by Marines who witnessed his courage and brilliance. At one point, Sammons says the FedEx Founder’s brothers in arms told him that Smith was placed in charge of a Marine supply hut, responsible for distributing ammunition, food and fuel to each company on schedule.
“He said the thing ran like a top and nobody had ever run it like that before,” Sammons said. “It was only natural that Smith took his instincts for organization and deployment and invent the overnight delivery phenomenon that is FedEx.”
Smith often credited the U.S. Marine Corps Leadership Manual as the source of his wisdom for FedEx managers.
Smith and Sammons were together on what turned out to be the last day of Fred Smith’s life, June 21 at Baptist Memorial Hospital East. They were there together to check on the welfare of Smith’s brother Gary who is Sammons’ father-in-law.
While in the Emergency Department waiting area, Sammons says Smith saw a FedEx courier in uniform walk in and reported to the nurse at the front desk that he was having chest pains.
“Fred said, excuse me,” Sammons said, “he got up and walked over and put his arm around the man. Later he told me that he’d welcomed him to the fraternity,” Sammons said.
Smith had undergone open heart surgery earlier in life and Sammons said Smith told him that he assured the FedEx courier that that company would take care of his delivery van filled with packages.
This episode reminds anyone paying careful attention that Fred Smith kept the instincts and leadership practices he embraced in the U.S. Marine Corps to the very end of his life. Sammons says Smith’s brother was admitted to Baptist East that day and the FedEx Founder and Sammons parted ways about 1 o’clock.
Smith was rushed back to the hospital later that evening and died shortly before 6 o’clock in Room 43 of the Baptist ER, the same room where his brother Gary had been treated earlier in the day.
But on the morning of the last day of his life in the ER waiting area, Sammons said he and Smith engaged in hours of conversation and that Smith was the one who brought up the FedEx St. Jude Championship that Sammons has now led as General Chairman for fifteen years.
Here’s how Sammons remembers Smith saying it:
“So pleased and proud of what you and all your volunteers and everybody has accomplished, taking this tournament to the level it’s at. It’s been great for FedEx; it’s been right for golf. It’s been great for Memphis, but mostly importantly, it’s been great for the kids at St. Jude.”
Sammons treasures that memory and now wants to do something very much in the style of Fred Smith, who made FedEx a global brand.
“Let’s make St. Jude the world’s charity, you know, across the globe,” Sammons said.
The golf tournament Sammons chairs has the perfect launching pad to advance St. Jude’s global reach.
“It’s shown in countries across the world,” Sammons said.
In fact, TV coverage originating in Memphis this week will be presented in more than 100 countries with broadcasters delivering play by play coverage and commentary in thirty languages. The FedEx St. Jude Championship’s website says elevated international coverage will be seen in the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and across Europe.
Without a doubt, the FedEx St. Jude Championship owes its presence in Memphis to the FedEx Founder.
“Every time I talked to him, no matter how familiar we might be, I always felt like I was talking to Thomas Edison or some great American who altered history,” Sammons said.
Jack Sammons and Fred Smith(Jack Sammons)
Sammons says after he decided against running for a fifth term on the Memphis City Council back in 2007, Fred Smith called him and ask about his plans. Sammons told the FedEx Chairman and CEO that he intended to start playing golf.
“A colossal waste of time, yeah, you can be doing better things than that,” is how Sammons remembers Smith’s reaction. Smith was a tennis aficionado, who played regularly at The Racquet Club when it was in business and had a tennis court built in the backyard of his East Memphis home.
But Smith recognized the value proposition golf had for FedEx and how much the Memphis tournament meant to the city.
So Smith asked Sammons to join the board of Youth Programs, the organization that recruits sponsors and volunteers for the Memphis PGA Tour stop.
“You could be my eyes and ears on this thing. I’m about to invest a lot of money in golf,” Sammons said Smith told him only later revealing his company’s mega-investment in the FedEx Cup, the PGA Tour’s season long competition that brings its first-round playoffs to Memphis this week.
The FedEx St. Jude Classic is back for 2023.(Action News 5)
“I was eminently unqualified to serve on the board; I didn’t play golf and didn’t know a bogie from a birdie,” Sammons said.
Sammons now says he’s a regular golfer with a fifteen handicap and membership at Chickasaw Country Club.
But Sammons became Chairman of Youth Programs in short order and revived the struggling Memphis tournament from the debacle of Stanford Financials’ sponsorship (2007-early 2009).
That company’s chairman, R. Allen Stanford, orchestrated an elaborate Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors–including many in Memphis–of approximately $7 billion.
Stanford was convicted of financial crimes in 2012 and sentenced to 110 years in prison. He’s now 75 yeas old and serving his sentence at the U.S. Penitentiary in Sumterville, Florida.
R. Allen Stanford / Courtesy of RNW
Sammons struggled with others on the Youth Programs board to find sponsorships and pro golfers willing to play in Bluff City. Sammons remembered the late tournament director Phil Cannon screaming in his office one morning.
“I ran over,” Sammons said as Cannon announced, “Phil Mickelson just tweeted he’s coming to the tournament! Phil (Mickelson) came and that seemed like it lit a fuse that created real momentum,” Sammons said.
“Fred often said that success breeds momentum and I told Phil (Mickelson), you’re a huge part of our success story,” Sammons said.
FedEx returned ultimately as title sponsor and the tournament has grown in significance, gradually moving from a regular stop on the PGA Tour to the World Golf Championships level and now the first stop in the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
“We truly have the greatest golfers in the world. They are struggling to get here,” Sammons said, “which is the reverse of what it was fifteen years prior.”
Sammons has a truly unique perspective on all of this as General Chairman of the FedEx St. Jude Championship, a close advisor to Smith, but also as a native Memphian who served four terms on city council and a long and ongoing stint on the Memphis Shelby County Airport Authority where FedEx is the prime tenant.
Jack Sammons(Action News 5)
Sammons is also a successful business leader who has made his mark in the hair care products industry.
Before all of that, Sammons family owned hundreds of juke boxes that were placed all over the Southeast and Sammons says, “Elvis and his mother, Roy Orbison and Willie Nelson with short hair and a business suit would dine at our home and encourage my father to include their records in his juke boxes,” Sammons said. “This is how you sold records in the 1950s and ‘60s – getting your record on as many juke boxes as you could.”
Sammons turns 70 in September and has a ready smile and a story to share about every major Memphis event that’s happened in his lifetime.
A little know fact is that Sammons worked on projects with the late Edward “Ned” Cook during the last ten years of his life. Cook was a philanthropist, war hero, business and civic leader in Memphis during his 78 years of life.
“Ned was the Fred Smith of his day in Memphis business in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s,” Sammons said.
Sammons said Smith approached Cook in the early 1970s after his return from Vietnam to request a $500,000 venture investment from Cook for the company that became FedEx.
At the time, Smith founded and was operating a far smaller air delivery service in Little Rock.
Sammons says Cook reviewed Smith’s FedEx business plan and said, “Son, you’re not asking for enough money.”
Sammons says Cook, who was then Chairperson of the Airport Authority, promptly leased three U.S. Air Force hangars leftover from World War II to FedEx for a dollar a year indefinitely.
Sammons says Cook told Smith, “We have bonding authority at the airport, and we’ve never issued a bond. We’ll issue you a bond for $3 million and that’ll help you get started,” said Sammons, who heard this story from both Cook and Smith, two of Memphis’ most respected and successful entrepreneurs.
Sammons says that $3 million bought the desks, papers and pens that started FedEx, now Memphis and Tennessee’s largest private employer. That’s how Memphis became the home of the overnight delivery and logistics leader.
Sammons says Fred Smith’s mother, the late Sally Wallace Hook, recognized her son’s brilliance early in his life.
“One year at Presbyterian Day School (PDS), Smith won every award the school gave away for his class,” Sammons said of the story that is cherished by Smith’s large family. “As they were driving away from the school, Fred’s mother said, you know, son, something about you is really special. You may well be one of these people that changes the world Fred looked her right in the eyes and said, ‘I think you’re right.’”
Smith overcame incredible obstacles in his young life. His father died just before his fourth birthday. Then he suffered from a bone disease as a child which required the use of crutches, “from like first through fifth grade,” Sammons said.
“He got to watch other boys participate in athletics that made him that much more interested once he was able to shed the crutches,” Sammons said.
Smith had a deep and abiding love of the game of football and once owned part of the Washington D.C. NFL franchise and invested generously in University of Memphis athletics, especially football.
One of Smith’s sons now coaches in the NFL. The day after the FedEx St. Jude Champion is crowned this year, August 11, a celebration of Fred Smith’s remarkable life will be held at FedExForum. It would have been Smith’s 81st birthday.
“He probably had more impact on Memphis, Tennessee, than any single person has had on any city in America and American history, “Sammons said.
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