Freddy Simon, namesake of the Wichita-based restaurant chain Freddy’s, has died at age 95
Frederick “Freddy” Simon, the smiling namesake and face of the Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers chain and a World War II Purple Heart recipient, died on Sunday morning, the company confirmed on Monday.
He was 95.
Simon, perhaps Wichita’s best-known nonagenarian, was for years a warm and constant presence in the Wichita restaurants, and he would always take the time to pose for photos with fans or speak to fellow veterans.
He was born in 1925 and grew up the youngest of nine siblings on his family farm near Colwich. He joined the army in 1943, just six days after graduating from high school. After basic training at Fort Riley, he was assigned to the first cavalry division and became a rifleman who helped liberate the Pacific Rim.
He was awarded the bronze star and later the purple heart after he was injured by a Japanese artillery shell. He lost several friends but survived, visiting the medics and then returning to combat.
When he returned from the war, he earned an accounting degree at Wichita State University Under the GI Bill and made his career as a wholesale liquor salesman, retiring in 2005.
He married Norma Jean Kerschen in 1947 and had six children. The couple was married for 71 years before she died in 2018.
But he always dreamed of opening a burger restaurant that would specialize in the type of flat, smashed steakburgers his parents made during the Great Depression — the kind pressed so thin that the meat hangs out the edges of the bun.
By the early 2000s, Simon’s sons Randy and Bill had made their careers in restaurants — Randy with Pizza Hut and Panera, Bill with Timberline. They started talking about how much fun it would be to open the burger joint their dad had always imagined.
They partnered with Scott Redler, who was Bill’s partner in Timberline, and in 2002, they opened the first Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers restaurant at 21st and Tyler in Wichita, naming it for Freddy.
When Simon’s sons told him their plan, he was touched, he told the Wichita Eagle in 2017.
“I’ll never forget it,” he said. “It was a big moment in my life.”
They filled the stores with black-and-white photos from Simon’s youth and time serving in the war. He was a regular presence there, and a life-sized cutout of him greeted customers in stores.
The concept took off and was franchised, and 18 years later, there are more than 375 Freddy’s restaurants in 32 states as well as two international locations in Dubai.
Even as an octogenarian, Simon would fly to store openings in other states for new store ribbon cuttings, and he loved it, his sons said.
In 2016, Simon suffered the loss of his son, Bill, the restaurant’s co-founder, who died after a battle with cancer at age 61.
Every year on Freddy Simon’s birthday, the chain would offer a frozen custard special where a cone cost in cents whatever age he was turning in years.
The last special, a 95-cent cone offer, happened in late February, just before the pandemic started. Simon was also honored this year with a birthday party at Ascension Via Christi hospital, where the Simon family has been longtime donors and where Simon had served on the hospital’s fundraising golf tournament board for more then 30 years.
That day, the hospital officially named a conference room in his honor.
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 1:48 PM.
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