Jump! for Oscar Mayer

Taken on July 19, 2006

OSCAR MAYER DIED TODAY at the age of 95. It must have been nice knowing that any time someone spelled your name, they'd end up singing it, too.


The obituary from the AP reads as follows:

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Oscar G. Mayer, retired chairman of the Wisconsin-based meat processing company that bears his name, died Monday. He was 95.

Mayer died of old age at Hospice Care in Fitchburg, said his wife, Geraldine.

He was the third Oscar Mayer in the family that founded Oscar Mayer Foods, which was once the largest private employer in Madison. His grandfather, Oscar F. Mayer, died in 1955 and his father, Oscar G. Mayer Sr., died in 1965.

Mayer retired as chairman of the board in 1977 at age 62 soon after the company recorded its first $1 billion year. The company was later sold to General Foods and is now a business unit of Kraft.