See Also:
Beginning of a FAMOUS Hero: The Eli Whitney Story.
Life Lesson #81 – Design Your Luck.
Johnny was a great HELPER when he was a young boy in the early 1800s. He was one of five children in his family, and he didn’t have to be told that his mother needed a lot of HELP after his father, Mr. Deere, had been lost at sea. So every day he would do his chores around the house, and then he would HELP the nearby blacksmith so he could earn some money for his family.
Johnny loved working in the blacksmith shop, and he learned the art of blacksmithing himself.
One day he was able to build his own blacksmith shop, but then lightning struck his shop and burned it down. That did not stop him, though. He built another one. Sadly, one day it burned also, and once again, times became very hard for John. That’s when he left Vermont and went to Illinois, looking for work.
While John was working in Illinois, a farmer came to him with a problem. You see, plows at that time were made of cast iron, and they didn’t work very well in the sticky soil there. So John HELPED the man by making a plow out of polished steel. Soon, farmers everywhere around started buying the plows John made because they did the job so well!
Business got better and better for John, and it wasn’t long until his plows were the most popular anywhere! John’s name, John Deere, would one day be seen all over the world, not just on plows, but on tractors, lawn mowers, and all kinds of things that make life better for many people. Yes, because of the things he learned by being a good HELPER, even as a child, John Deere became a HERO!
– Jim Lord