7 The Ford DETERMINATION Henry Ford (1863-1947), the son of
Irish
immigrants, was a school dropout. At age 15 he was a machinist’s apprentice in Detroit and later worked as chief engineer of the Edison
Company in Detroit until 1899, when he and others founded the
Detroit Auto Company. In 1903 he struck out on his own, founding the
Ford Motor Company. He introduced the Model Tin, assembly line production in 1913, the Model A in 1927, and the V engine in. He ran fora US. Senate seat and lost and atone time considered a Presidential bid.
8 Many years ago, I Napoleon Hill had an abiding interest in higher education, and post-secondary
education in general, throughout his adult life, and he was associated with a variety of teaching institutions.
His constant theme was that education should not simply focus on
“imparting knowledge but on teaching students how to organize knowledge and apply it to accomplish specific objectives.
After he was graduated from high school, he completed business school in Tazewell, Virginia, and studied law at Georgetown
University Law School In Washington, DC, but dropped out the first year because of financial reasons. In 1913 he began working in the advertising and sales department of LaSalle
Extension University inChicago, where he discovered a talent for motivating students and teaching them how to sell. In 1916 he established the George
Washington Institute to teach a correspondence course in salesmanship. In 1923 he made arrangements to purchase and operate the Metropolitan Business College in Cleveland (it was during this period that he was invited to deliver the commencement address at
Salem College).
Hill in 1931 established the International Publishing Corporation of America and the related International Success University to distribute success resources, including anew publication he launched,
Success Magazine. In 1941 he became a resident lecturer in psychology at Presbyterian College in Clinton, South Carolina,
delivering talks to undergraduates
on The Philosophy of AmericanAchievement.” He received an honorary doctorate from Pacific
International University in the late sand was appointed head of that university’s new Department of Industrial Philosophy.
In 1962 Hill
and his wife, Annie Lou, established the Napoleon
Hill Foundation, a charitable organization heavily steeped in educational mission. The Foundation is headquartered in Wise,
Virginia. The associated Napoleon Hill World Learning Center is located at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, Indiana. Through the years the Foundation has been associated with several institutions
of higher learning, including Johnson Wales College (formerly in
Rhode Island, Salem International University in West Virginia, the
University of the Pacific, University of Texas, and University of
Northern Iowa. A college professor, Judith Williamson, heads the Hill
World Learning Center.
Two university presidents, the late Dr. Bill L.
Atchley and the late Dr. Horace Fleming (University of Southern
Mississippi), served distinguished terms on the Board of Directors of the Napoleon Hill Foundation.
Here is a footnote to a footnote which in a tenuous “Six
Degrees of Separation way leads from higher education, to the
Napoleon Hill Foundation, to one of the top names in the broadcasting industry. Bill Lee Atchley was born in 1932 in Cape Girardeau,
Missouri, five years before the publication of
Think and Grow Rich!He was the son of Cecil Atchley, a cement plant laborer, and his wife,
a laundry worker. Employing many of the success principles of
TheThink and Grow Rich Philosophy from an early age, Atchley (“Billy”
in his youth) went onto overcome the meager circumstances of his birth and play professional baseball in the New York Giants organization, get a doctorate in engineering, and then become president of Clemson University in South Carolina (during which time he served on the Hill Foundation. He also later was named president of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, and then
Southeast Missouri State University.
As it turns out, Bill Atchley's wife, Pat (he died in 2000, she in 2014), was the former Pat Limbaugh,
also of Cape Girardeau. Her cousin from Cape Girardeau was none other than Rush Limbaugh III, who has presided over what many consider to be the most successful, and profitable, program in the history of radio broadcasting. Limbaugh, credited with virtually reinventing the national radio talk show beginning in 1988, is one of the best examples of how using a Definite Chief Aim to guide one’s decisions and actions can lead to extraordinary success in life. He has
certainly proved Hill’s prediction that There is plenty of room in radio for those who can produce or recognize IDEAS (See endnote 6 on pages 343 - 345
.)
9
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