He Refused His Dying Mother's Plea to Finish College
She begged him to leave his hippie stores and get a degree, and he said no. Years later he came to believe his defiance came from her.
David Senra · My Conversation with John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market | David SenraThe last time John Mackey, the co-founder of Whole Foods Market, saw his mother, she was partly paralyzed and confined to bed. It was 1987. He was 34 years old and running a handful of small, hippie grocery stores in Texas. She had one request.
"Please, please, please, please, promise me you will go back to school and get your degree, and make something of your life," she begged him. She told him he had so much potential, had scored so well on IQ and aptitude tests, and was now just nothing but a grocer.
He said no. She died about two weeks afterward, still convinced he had thrown his life away. She never saw those few stores grow into a national chain with more than 500 locations.
His mother had grown up poor in Bastrop, Texas, a tiny Baptist town. She wanted respectability above all. She wanted her children to move up in the world, to earn standing in their community, and to give her proud news to share at bridge parties. Mackey's older sister did what was expected. She went to Wellesley, earned a master's degree in French literature and a doctorate studying the mind, and afterward became a teacher.
Mackey did the opposite. He scored high on tests and got A's when he cared, but he repeatedly left college without finishing and then opened a grocery store. To his mother, a grocer was a second-class citizen. She did not see an entrepreneur or a successful businessman, and she believed he had wasted all the money and devotion his parents had invested in him.
On that final visit, he refused her. "Mom, I'm never going back to school," he told her. "I'm building Whole Foods, and it's going to be this amazing company." He even told her he might one day get an honorary degree because he would make so much money, which he says later happened.
Years later, someone who had read his book pointed out her past and gave Mackey a new way to see her. His mother, for all her talk of respectability, had been a rebel herself. She had left Bastrop for Houston and Rice University, and in that strict Baptist world, she smoked, drank, gambled, and danced.
Mackey had always credited his rebellious streak to his father. He came to believe it had come from his mother, who had passed it to him without meaning to and then disliked seeing it in him. In his own little ceremony, he thanked her.
"Mom, thanks for helping me become a rebel, because it's really helped me be successful in life," he told her. He says he still talks to his parents in his mind, asks their forgiveness, and would pay his entire fortune for one more night to tell them he loves them, and to tell his mother he turned out okay.
Questions people ask
How big did Whole Foods become after his mother died?
After 1987, Whole Foods grew from a few stores in Texas into a national chain with more than 500 stores. It went public in 1992, which gave it stock to buy other natural food chains, and Amazon bought it in 2017 for $13.7 billion. His mother saw only the early, struggling version.
Did Mackey ever get a degree?
No. He never went back to finish college as his mother asked. He says he later received an honorary doctorate, just as he predicted on her deathbed, after he became successful in business.
What does he mean by still having conversations with his parents?
He describes it as an inner conversation in which he asks deceased parents for forgiveness, forgives them, and expresses gratitude for everything from birth to education. He says he has done this with both parents and now feels at peace, though he still wishes for one more night with them.