From here: http://golfterlingua.com/chili.html
Aviator and editor, George Haddaway, and Jim Fuller are credited with creating the Chili Appreciation Society anywhere from 1939 to 1947 depending on who is telling the story. It did not merit mention in Joe Cooper’s 1952 book, With Or Without Beans, but by 1960 the Society was making news in Tolbert’s Texas. On November 2 of that year, Frank X. Tolbert reported that Haddaway and Ted Malloy were members of the “Dallas Press Club’s new chili research and development department . . . dedicated to ‘the discovery of the finest chili recipe in the world’.” They were openly soliciting samples from the public and keeping score. Fred Massengill of Terrell was cited as, “having the best yet presented.” Tolbert closed his column with, “Personally, I think the committee has just thought up a scheme to get a lot of good, free chili.”
Haddaway’s Chili Appreciation Society was becoming very much appreciated in its Dallas, Texas headquarters. It’s eclectic membership met with semi-irregularity to partake in the eating of chili and to carry on with fellow chili aficionados. One scene of this nonsensical reverence was the Adolphus Hotel, a block or so from Bob Pool’s heralded chili joint of a decade earlier. With George Haddaway as Chief Chili Head and Wick Fowler as Chief Chili Cook, the Society gained international status in a well-documented investiture ceremony held in Mexico City on April 7, 1964. Among the devoted chili heads making the south of the border trip were the afore mentioned newsman, Ted Maloy, Dallas attorney David Witts and American Airlines public relations man, Buck Marryat