Developer Of Chili's Chain Brinker Dies

Brinker was a polo buff who started the Willow Bend Polo and Hunt Club in suburban Dallas in 1972.

In 1993, Brinker was seriously injured when a horse fell on him during a polo match in Boca Raton, Fla. For 14 days a mechanical respirator kept him alive. He was in a coma for three weeks and was paralyzed on his left side for nearly three months but recovered and eventually walked again.

Doctors said it would take at least a year for a meaningful recovery, but four months after his accident Brinker was back leading his company.

"I've never known anybody with a more indomitable spirit," Perot said. "It's just amazing how he would bounce back."

Brinker was divorced from Nancy Brinker, a former U.S. ambassador and Republican fundraiser, who last month was named the World Health Organization's "goodwill ambassador" to raise cancer awareness. She is the founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a breast cancer charity named for her only sister who died of the disease at 36.

Norman Brinker served on the Susan G. Komen for the Cure board since the organization's founding in 1982.