The air was still. Dangerously still.
But no one on the beautiful Lake Winnipesaukee could have suspected that peaceful Saturday morning in 1985 just how lethal the stillness might be for one of the area’s most recognizable summer residents, Bill Marriott.
Bill had been coming to New Hampshire’s largest lake for four decades. His father, founder of the large Hot Shoppes restaurant chain, had been bringing his family to the lake since the 1940s. The Marriott clan rightly considered the place a paradise on earth. Proof of its strong magic was that it was the only place fifty-three-year-old Bill could truly relax. His $3.5-billion company had 140,000 employees around the world. He had built or bought 144 hotels and resorts, turning Marriott into the largest company-owned hotel chain in the United States. Dozens more hotels were in blueprint or construction phases. Added to that were 90 kitchens serving 150 airlines around the globe, more than 1,400 restaurants, and catering services for 1,400 clients in university, hospital, and company cafeterias.
Bill’s father, J. Willard, Sr., had lived to witness these successes, but he had died that summer, on August 13, passing peacefully at the age of eighty-four after enjoying a family barbecue at the lake. The well-attended Washington, D.C., funeral had featured speakers such as former President Richard Nixon and evangelist Billy Graham. Now it was August 24, and most of the Marriott family had traveled from the D.C. area back to their summer vacation homes on the north side of the lake.
An important event was scheduled for Sunday. All the family were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known by some as Mormons). The Latter-day Saint community in Wolfeboro near the lake had been growing slowly over the years and had finally qualified for its own chapel, which had just been completed in June. A close friend of the family, Elder Boyd K. Packer, a member of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, had promised J.W. before his death that he would personally dedicate the chapel. After speaking at J.W.’s funeral, he had joined the family at the lake on Friday, awaiting the Sunday dedication services.
Having an Apostle staying with Bill’s newly widowed mother, Allie, was a spiritual comfort and a singular honor. When Elder Packer mentioned that he would like to go on a boat ride Saturday morning, it was a request Bill was happy to fulfill. There were few more joyful times for him than driving his baby blue Donzi Express Cruiser out on the sun-dappled waters of the lake, throttling up to speeds in excess of fifty miles an hour. Incessant daily winds had been whipping the lake into whitecaps, but that Saturday morning was perfect. Though not breezy, it was cool, prompting Bill to wear a wool sweater.
After breakfast he went down to his two-slip boathouse to prepare the Donzi. It was after 9:30 a.m., and normally Bill’s three small grandchildren would have been swarming all over the boat, anxious to be with Grandpa. But their mother, Bill’s daughter, Debbie, had slowed them down that morning, and they were just getting on their life jackets. Friend and guest Roger Maxwell, the longtime golf pro at a Marriott resort, walked out on the back lawn and saw Bill gassing up the portside tank. The hose connected to a line that ran up to a gas pump the Marriotts had installed mostly for filling up their cars. Refueling was routine for Bill, but that morning was so still, there was no breeze to disperse the gas fumes, and the vapors dropped down into the boat. Bill did not smell the accumulation, nor could he know that the boat’s ignition switch was faulty. When he turned the power on to check the gas gauge, a spark ignited the gas.
The explosion rattled windows up and down the lakeshore, and the flames appeared to envelop Bill in a fraction of a second. There was no way he could survive. But then, within moments, Maxwell, the only eyewitness, saw his friend staggering through the lake shallows to the shore.
Newspaper reports would claim that Bill was blown out of the boat. But for Bill, who was literally on fire, a miracle had occurred. In the midst of the flare-up, he had heard a clear voice: “Get out of the boat!” Instead of being immobilized by shock, he had jumped into the lake.
Bill’s wife, Donna, and son John heard the distinctive “whoosh” of a gas explosion, and they rushed out of the house to see the boat engulfed in flames. They were certain Bill must be dead. Grief turned to relief in seconds as Bill stumbled out of the lake, charred skin hanging from his hands, looking, as one witness put it, like “The Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
Inside the house, John’s girlfriend, Angie, was showering when she heard the explosion. Looking out a window facing the water, she saw Bill emerging from the lake. She swung into action, jumping out of the shower, ripping off the bedsheets, and bringing them back into the shower to soak them with water. Tossing on a T-shirt and shorts, she was out of the house in less than a minute, rushing down the yard to Bill, who had collapsed on the lawn with Donna and John ministering to him. Bill’s polyester golf pants had melted onto his legs or been burned away, while the sweater, still hot from the fire, had prevented burns to his upper torso. The sweater came off, and Angie wrapped him in the wet sheets.
Someone called an ambulance, but the trip through the traffic-choked resort town of Wolfeboro would take too long. Maxwell loaded Bill, trembling with shock, into a car and sped the seven miles along country roads to Huggins Hospital. Doctors and nurses were alarmed at the third-degree burns over his body, as well as the possibility that fumes and flames had seared his lungs.
Bill’s mother, Allie, soon arrived in the family station wagon with Donna, Debbie, and Elder Packer. Still fearing Bill might not survive, the family asked the Apostle to give Bill a priesthood blessing, which was done with consecrated oil and hands placed upon his head. Elder Packer felt inspired to promise not only that would Bill survive, but that he would not be scarred. He boldly pronounced that the accident would have some divine purpose, as yet unknown, beyond the miracle of his life being saved.
During the weeks of painful recovery, Bill had time to reflect on this life-altering event. He already had a strong conviction about God, the healing sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and the truth of the Church bearing the Savior’s name. He knew without a doubt that he had been miraculously saved, that he was watched over from on high, that he had an important place in the world and a mission that included his family, his friends, his church, and his larger family of Marriott employees.
Among the condolences he had received after his father’s death less than two weeks earlier, there was a particularly poignant note from family friend Coretta Scott King. The widow of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., had written: “I pray that God will sustain you and help you to accept His will, knowing that all things work together for good, for them that love the Lord and are called according to His purposes.”
Bill’s life to that point had not been easy. Business for him had always been a kind of fiery battlefield with competitors, price fluctuations, the labor market, government regulation, and the seesaw of the economy. Overarching that was the most fiery flame of all—the hot temper of his Depression-era father, whose fear of debt led him to oppose many of the daring business decisions Bill had to make to build the Marriott empire.
Now the son was on his own. Though Bill couldn’t know it, the challenging years ahead would include explosive growth in the 1980s; a crippling recession and Japanese stock market crash in the early 1990s that would nearly cost him the company; a potentially fatal personal health issue; the challenges of a world after 9/11, when his Marriott hotel between the Twin Towers was obliterated; and so much more.
He could not see that there would come a day when Marriott hotels would number more than 7,000, and he would be the world’s undisputed number-one hotelier. But what he already knew that day in 1985 was more than enough. He knew that God loved him, that his family and friends loved him, and that his employees deeply appreciated his leadership.
Later he would say of that day, “I could hardly wait to get back to work.” It was a lesson he had learned from his father, that a life of ease is an enemy to progress, both for the person and for the corporation—that, as Bill often put it: “Success is never final.”