WASHINGTON (AP) — He’s 82 now, but Bill Marriott can’t bring himself to completely walk away from the company that bears his name. On Tuesday, the octogenarian presided over the grand opening of the gleaming 1,175-room Marriott Marquis, the new convention-center hotel in Northwest Washington that his family considers one of its proudest legacies.

“I really do wish my parents could be here to see this wonderful and monumental hotel,” Marriott told about 200 guests, who toasted the hotel with root beer to honor the nine-stool District root-beer stand that begat a hotel empire.