MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A retired FedEx employee is remembering Fred Smith the founder of FedEx who died on Saturday.
Smith died at the age of 80 but not before reimagining the shipping and global commerce world and making an impact in millions of lives over the years.
Mary Harvey Gurley worked in Corporate Communications at FedEx, retiring after 38 years, she interacted with Smith often.
“Well it was an economics paper and it was a C and he put in basically the structure of what a future distribution company would look like, and the professor said there’s no way this would work and as Fred would say that was a good grade for him at the time. I don’t believe that but it certainly got a few laugh lines at the time. But I think from a very early age he saw the need to change the way the world worked,” said Mary Harvey Gurley, retired FedEx employee.
It’s now hard to imagine a world where FedEx doesn’t exist, but Fred Smith seems to have always had an idea it would be here.
He attended Yale in the 1960s, pursuing a degree in economics as he worked as a charter pilot.
While in college, he thought of the concept for an integrated air to ground system that would ensure overnight delivery we now know today as FedEx, retiring after 38 years, Gurley interacted with Smith often.
It started back in 1973, with a fleet of 14 planes, evolving into what we know today, a company redefining global commerce.
“I thought it was going to be big but I doubt I thought it was going to be this big, obviously it has become a huge company, thanks to the efforts of a lot of people,” said Fred Smith to WREG in 1994.
“While all the rest of us were living in 2025, mentally Fred would be living in 2035, always about what was coming next,” said Gurley.
After college graduation he served in the Marines in Vietnam.
“He would always say, ‘I saw all the destruction in Vietnam and I saw the military’s logistics system and how many ways it could’ve been better’ and he wanted to change that and when he got home from Vietnam, he wanted to create something brand new,” said Gurley.
And, after his service in the war, he did, but in order to grow he had to work with government affairs.
“One of the first things he had to do was de-regulate the aviation industry in order for the corporation to take off in the late 70s and early 80s.” said Gurley.
“His heart really was for that person picking up that package, moving that package, he just really felt like he had to do the very best for those hourly workers as he possibly could because we could not run the corporation without them,” said Gurley.
“For too long some in our community have chosen to look the other way. To pretend that these problems either don’t exist or cannot be cured by any means,” said Smith to WREG in 1994.
“From the FedEx Forum to the FedEx Institute at the University of Memphis, every good thing in Memphis for 40 or 50 years, involves him or his family or somebody at FedEx,” said Jim Strickland, former Memphis mayor.
“He knew what it was like to go into a disaster zone when he was in Vietnam and the military and we could get material in to take care of our employees, you know our water, what our employees needed in order to get on their feet so that they could get back and serve their communities with disaster work,” said Gurley. “So philanthropy as well as diversity was always at the very corner of what we were taught to do.”
Today in the Mid-South it’s hard to go anywhere without seeing the FedEx logo or knowing someone who works at the company.
But beyond investing in the city of Memphis, Mary says Smith always made sure to invest in a great team surrounding him and beyond.