Mitch Schnurman asks outgoing Southwest Airlines chairman and former CEO Herb Kelleher how he wants to be remembered:

“That I consumed more Wild Turkey and cigarettes than anybody else in the industry,” he quipped to reporters last week, after announcing that this would be his last year as chairman of Southwest Airlines.

As Schnurman notes, Kelleher’s fun-loving response dramatically underplays the revolutionary impact that this remarkable leader had on air travel, which he made affordable for millions of new air travelers. Read Schnurman’s fine column on Kelleher, which includes this beaut of an anecdote on why Kelleher agreed to the Wright Amendment:

My favorite memory of Kelleher was in late 2005, when the debate over the Wright Amendment was intensifying and moving to Washington. In the Senate hearing room, he lived up to the moment, saying that he had agreed to the 1979 Wright law in the same way the Germans accepted the end of World War I.
“In other words,” he told the senators, “with a gun to my head.”