Wendell Cherry

Wendell Cherry (September 25, 1935 – July 16, 1991) was an American lawyer, entrepreneur, art collector, and patron. The company he co-founded, Humana, grew under his leadership to become the largest hospital operator in the United States. In the 1980s, he also built one of the country's most important art collections.

Life and career Cherry was born in 1935 in Horse Cave, a rural community in Kentucky, to a grocery wholesaler, Layman S. Cherry, and his wife, Geneva (born Spillman). He went to Caverna High School and graduated in 1953. At this time, Cherry was already serving as chief editor of the Kentucky Law Journal. He became an associate at the law firm Wyatt, Grafton, & Sloss. He would also later teach economics at the University of Louisville. In 1959, he met David Jones, in an interview Wyatt, Grafton & Sloss. He would become his business partner and, later, co-founder of Humana.

Cherry died on July 16, 1991 at his home in Louisville due to lung cancer. He worked as a lawyer for the group, collecting money from the sponsors for Clay. He was also the co-owner and president of the Kentucky Colonels basketball franchise.

Art collector The American art magazine Art & Antiques named Cherry in 1985 among the 100 most important art collectors of the United States. The reputation of his collection was not only because of the quality of the works, but also for the sometimes very high prices that he paid for these pictures and scored from subsequent sales. A record-breaking example of these works was Pablo Picasso's self-portrait Yo, Picasso. Cherry purchased the picture in 1981 at Sotheby's for $5.3 million,

In the field of academia, Cherry endowed the University of Kentucky College of Law with $100,000 for the H. Wendell Cherry Professor of Law. He also endowed two chairs dedicated to medicine at the School of Medicine, the Wendell Cherry Chair in Clinical Trial Research and The Wendell Cherry Chair in Cancer Translational Research.