On this day in 1944, the MidSouth celebrates the late great Fred Smith, who was born on this day in 1944 in Marks, Mississippi.
Prior to his development of FedEx, Smith graduated from Yale University in 1966 with a B.A. in Economics and would go on to serve in the Marine Corps in Vietnam that same year until 1969.
Smith’s time in the military witnessing the life-saving impact of dependable logistics and supply movements in part informed his development of Federal Express in 1971, an idea he had pondered as an undergrad but was famously criticized for by one of his professors.
Nevertheless, Smith’s Federal Express (or FedEx as it was later shortened to in 1994) has since become a distribution powerhouse with its global headquarters in Memphis, as its central location in the U.S. and weather conditions proved ideal for his vision that has since changed the Bluff City for the better.
