Arch Clark West | Creator of Doritos, 97

Arch Clark West, 97, the retired Frito-Lay executive credited with creating Doritos, died Sept. 20 in Dallas.

Mr. West had a food-industry reputation when the Frito Co. recruited him as its marketing vice president in 1960. He had worked for Lever Bros. and Young & Rubicam in New York as a liaison between the creative teams and clients that included Jell-O.

He was inspired to create Doritos after Frito merged with H.W. Lay & Co. in 1961. During a family vacation to California, "we were near San Diego and he stumbled on some little shack where they were making some interesting kind of chip," his daughter Jana Hacker said.

He liked the concept but couldn't sell the idea to management. "He got some money from a budget and started to do some R&D that the bigwigs didn't know about," she said. Doritos, the first tortilla chip to be sold nationally, became a multimillion-dollar product for Frito-Lay, now part of PepsiCo Inc.

- Dallas Morning News