John Willingham

John Herman Willingham was born on May 19, 1932, in Bevier, Missouri. He attended the University of Missouri on a football and baseball scholarship. The Missouri baseball team finished second at the College World Series in 1952, with Willingham on the roster. He signed a professional contract to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals organization, but was inducted into the United States Army in 1953, serving until 1955. He returned to professional baseball afterward, playing in the Cardinals organization through 1956, when an injury ended his playing career. He married Marjorie Yock. They had three daughters: Kristi, Karla, and Kara.

Inventions and business

After his military service, Willingham worked in the construction industry. He spent five years in the precast-concrete construction business in Little Rock, Arkansas, with former Arkansas governor Winthrop Rockefeller, and later held a post at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Nixon administration.

Willingham was named on 17 U.S. patents. His earliest was granted in 1961 for a dispenser for material containers. Later patents covered concrete form surfacing, a crane boom attachment, systems of industrialized building construction using precast Tee-shaped concrete elements, and portable concrete molding apparatus. A patent issued on May 27, 1986, described an indirect-heat cooker. The cooker was marketed as the W'ham Turbo Cooker. According to a 2013 Commercial Appeal profile, it was promoted as a way to reduce carcinogens produced during cooking. One of the original cookers was provided to the American Royal Barbecue Hall of Fame Museum in Kansas City in 2015.

In November 2011, Willingham filed an application for a hydroelectric paddlewheel system for high-flow rivers. The application cited the Mississippi River at Memphis as a possible use. The patent was granted on July 8, 2014, about fourteen months after his death. A continuation patent was granted on January 5, 2016. Both patents were assigned to Power Flo LLC.

His other inventions included the Harmonic Stress Releaser, a therapeutic device developed for his wife Marjorie's migraine headaches; and a nasal spray bottle design. Smart City Memphis reported that his precast-concrete building method, which he called the T Mobile Pre-Cast Concrete Molding Machine and Sub-systems, was the subject of a panel discussion with Buckminster Fuller at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1970s.

Willingham opened his first restaurant in Collierville, Tennessee. A restaurant at Perkins Road and American Way operated from 1985 to 1987. A fire gutted the Brookhaven Circle location on August 2, 2001, and the business relocated to a former Shoney's building in the Parkway Village neighborhood. He founded Whamco, Inc. to manufacture and distribute Willingham's dry rubs, marinades, and sauces.