Entrepreneur. A native of Texas, he was running an oilfield service company when he went bankrupt in the oil bust of the early 1980s. In 1985, he decided to start a new venture as founder and president of Zapp’s Gourmet Potato Chip Company in Gramercy, Louisiana. His product line,  which included “Zapp’s Tiger Tators”, “Natural Kettle-Fried Chips”, “Jalapeno Chips, “Dirty Potato Chips”, and “Cajun Crawtators” (the nation’s first Cajun spicy potato chip), quickly became a favorite throughout the country. In the 1990s, Zappe’s success was in national publications such as People Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and he was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 1997. To date Zapp’s Gourmet Potato Chips has chip-making facilities from coast to coast which produce 150,000 bags of chips per day and employees hundreds. He died in Houston, Texas while undergoing treatment for throat cancer. (bio by: John “J-Cat” Griffith)