From a Dirt Floor to Millionaire – An Inspirational Success Story

 Today we’re gonna talk about a real American rags to richest story, a story about a man who was born in the great depression into poverty, who had built a business that employed dozens of people for many, years, and who retired quite comfortably despite not having even a high school diploma.

My dad was born in 1938 in a small southern Ohio town called Six Mile Turn. Now, to say that he was born in poverty would be truly an understatement. When he was little, they didn’t have running water, electricity, lights, or even a floor in their house. , he was literally born on a kitchen table, in a kitchen with a   dirt floor.

​he attended a  one room schoolhouse from kindergarten to eighth grade. There was literally nine rooms combined into one. So basically all the students from kindergarten, first grade, second grade, all the way through eighth grade they all attended the same class. They had

  individual chalkboards, a single teacher that split her time up teaching all of the kids to read, do math and, all the basics all at the same time.

They raised food  themselves on their property, they raised vegetables small farm animals like chickens. They were not able to raise enough to really eat and feed themselves comfortably with three kids and two adults in the same household, they.

did what they could with what they had canning and preserving things. When they would have chickens that were ready to be harvested.

They would slaughter one at a time, and that single chicken would have to last the entire family for a week. My dad always talked about his dad eating the parts of the chicken that basically nobody else would eat. So that he could provide the actual meat for his wife and his family

my grandfather hunted and he would bring back whatever he was able to, whether that was raccoons, rabbits, opossum pretty much whatever wild animals that he was able to find in the wild and trap or hunt. I would say that my dad always talked about those times in very, glowing terms.

He never really talked about those times as rough as they would be, and as horrific as it would be for somebody today to go and have to live in a house that didn’t have running water, heat, electricity doing their homework by candlelight. He never really talked about those times as being the hard times of his life or the bad times.

He always talked about that as really being very, happy memories for him. And growing up he always referred to the six mile turn area as his home.  

​

That was where he always felt happiest and felt the most connected to the surroundings, to his family, to pretty much everything.That really, truly  meant a lot  to him in his formative years

when he was a, little bit older, in between grade school and high school age. His dad moved the family up to Cleveland, Ohio. They moved up there because there was really basically no work in rural southeast Ohio at that time, and he wanted to have better opportunities for his family.

  So he packed all the kids into a car, Beverly Hillbilly style, and they drove up Route 13 into Cleveland, Ohio. I’ve heard my dad and his sister talk many times about the trip up from southern Ohio. into Cleveland. They had, when I’m talking that this was like Beverly, hilly style.

I’m really not joking. They literally packed everything the family had into the back of a, 1940s car. And the kids had to hold their feet up on the, in the vehicle because there was literally no floorboards in the backseat. The car had rusted out so badly that there was literally no floor for them.

 And they would often talk about looking down as they were driving and seeing the road underneath their feet on the way to Cleveland. That, trip was really, I feel like the turning point in the life for my dad and his brother and sister. They came to Cleveland and attended school here.

His father got a job in a local machine shop called Kenizg Tool. His mom worked for G.E. To supplement the family income. My dad went through high school and then shortly before graduation, he actually got into a fight with his shop teacher, punched the shop teacher , and got expelled from school and was unable to graduate.

They gave him the opportunity to apologize to the teacher and he would be able to get his diploma and be officially a high school graduate. But he refused. And even when he was 70 some years old, he was still angry at that and, never regretted not actually apologizing, which it kind of tells you about as much as you needed to him about my dad .

The other significant thing that happened in my dad’s life at 18 was he got married and had a child.

My oldest brother, Chuck Junior. This was in 1956, and he found himself 18 years old, married, and a father with no high school diploma.  

He went to work in the same factory that his father worked in and started to apprentice as a machinist.

He learned all the old style manual machines, lathes and mills, and really became very well regarded machinist.  He was very talented in that particular field.   He worked in that shop for quite a few years alongside his dad.

He had another three children. My older sisters, eventually, his marriage with his wife, and as you could imagine, having three young children or four young children and. A very small income, only a single income household. They ended up drifting apart and getting a divorce.

Around this time, he became unsatisfied with where he was in life. He didn’t want to be somebody who would punch a clock for his entire life. He didn’t want to be the person who, went to work every single day of his life and basically had nothing to show for it.

He had to pay child support for four kids, had to support himself and borrowed money, bought some metal working machines, and set up a garage machine shop. They get a few orders from people that they knew and started making parts.

They all , still had their day jobs at the machine shop that they worked in. They kept those jobs. They would work anywhere between eight to 12 hour shifts there. And then after work they would go work in their garage shop making parts for their customers.

 Around this time my mother and father met, they actually met where my dad worked in his day job. They both worked there. He as a machinist. My mom is a office manager. They started dating and eventually got married. They would both work their day jobs and then go in the evenings and work at making parts, packing parts, shipping them hand delivering them, doing whatever they needed to do.

Often after working a full day in their day job, they would work until 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the morning, sometimes all night to fulfill the orders and then go back to their day job the next day.

So around the time that I was born my uncle and grandfather left the business and went back to Southern Ohio, where they were from and where most of the extended families still lived. My dad ended up taking on different partners from the ones that he had and basically ended up where the machine shop was not sustainable and he ended up leaving it.

This was about the same time that the shop that they had all worked in, closed down. And so essentially he ends up having to pay child support for four kids to his ex-wife. With a new wife and a new kid and his day job is gone and he’s lost his business.

I feel like this is the point in life where most of us find ourselves really at rock bottom. He’s basically lost everything he’d ever worked for, lost his first family

and basically the vast majority of any money that he did make went to child support. So essentially my mom was working as a secretary and supporting the entire household. Him, me, and paying rent and things like that. while he was trying to find new work and still had to pay child support , he ended up having to take a job four or five hours away from home in a machine shop.

It was the only job that he could get at the time, and he did that for a year or two. Now, trio was still going on with the new partners, they were not able to produce the same quality of machining that they had done before.

And my dad still wanting really to see the project through ended up working with them. And then eventually he was able to buy shares back into the business. He ended up buying again, a one third share, and they ended up with a whole new set of three partners.

 The partners were my dad Rudy and another one named Warren. Now, the three partners were actually very, complimentary in a lot of ways. My dad was an expert machinist. He provided the technical know-how that it took an order to actually produce the product.

Rudy was really a great networker and business relationship builder. So essentially he was the person who would kind of introduce trio to new companies. I wouldn’t say strictly sales because in that industry it, it wasn’t really sales in the traditional sense. Like we would think selling a car where somebody comes in and you have to pitch them on the car and, all those kind of things.

It was really more relationship oriented. Taking people out to dinner, being social, just being really well networked within the community of. People that were buying machining services. Now, in that sense, it’s very much like you would have in any other B2B industry. So basically Rudy, he set out, being well known within the industry, my dad focused on producing and getting the stuff out the door that kept the reputation of the company, in good regard.

And then Warren was an accountant. Now basically the difference here, once we had partners was instead of one person having to be completely responsible for all aspects of the business and being completely talented at everything from sales, production, finance the whole nine yards.

They were able to really specialize in those things while the business was growing and the company was able to grow pretty rapidly.

after several years of that, eventually Warren, retired and my dad and Rudy bought him out.

My dad and his partner often butted heads. Eventually it became obvious that the partners were just completely incompatible. And it became necessary to end that partnership.

The decision ended up being made to buy his partner out. At this point he had just finally finished paying off child support just really gotten to a point where he was financially free, my mom and dad went into. A couple million dollars worth of debt in order to risk everything that they had ever built.

At that point, in order to buy my dad’s partner out. as you can imagine, this was something that was very tense at the time.

I will never forget sitting at the kitchen table at night with my parents, agonizing over the risk that they were about to take. If it didn’t go through they would’ve ended up losing their home, their cars, their retirement, everything that they had both ever worked for.

So it, they agonized for weeks and weeks on end how were they gonna do this? Was it the right thing to do? Eventually they ended up mortgaging their house, their future, and just went into a all or nothing gamble, and bought the partner out

when they had done the calculations to purchase the partner out, the estimation was it was going to take somewhere between 15 to 20 years to pay off the loans

With the partner gone, my dad had full control of the company it ended up going through a period of tremendous growth. Having record sales every year. Growing to, total of around 35 employees.

they were running shifts 24 7, 365 days a year.

Churning out parts, brought on new customers,

A kind of a golden age of this company.

They ended up paying the loans off within five years. Many of these employees.

Started,

as early as, say like the late sixties,

Many of them were with the company all the way until it closed in 2009. My dad, really felt a huge sense of obligation and responsibility to all of these employees who had literally devoted their entire lives to helping make this company grow

My dad worked most of his life in this company,

12 plus hour days, sometimes 15, 18 hour days. He almost never took vacations. He missed out on most of his children’s lives, including my own. He was a pretty much a ghost in his own household.

He was home late at night, in a week on a weeknight when I was growing up. I may only see him,

in the morning when I would get up. He would usually still be either in bed sleeping from the night before or he would already be out the door, gone to work.

he usually got home at night after I had already gone to bed.

He would show up on the weekends, on weekends that he didn’t work. And,

it was

a lifestyle that was based on,

always working all the time, always work, work, work. That was the highest priority that a man could have. And I think a lot of that came from,

📍 he was a child of the Great Depression

he grew up in the most poverty stricken area that you could imagine. He grew up in a home where there was not food, there was not,

it wasn’t just that they couldn’t have the toy they wanted. . They, he literally grew up in a home when he was a child where they didn’t know if they could eat. And he lived his entire life with just a overpowering fear that it could all be taken away again.

He really, truly believed that his number one responsibility in life was just to provide for his family and to give his children a chance at a better life than the one that he had had

. June 17th, 1994.

This was a day that changed my father’s life, changed my life, changed the way that he viewed work, family money changed the way that I viewed all those things as well. Most of you remember that day if you were around back. as the day of the OJ Simpson car chase. In my family, that was the day that my dad had a heart attack and an open heart surgery.

My dad was a workaholic. He was a hard, hardworking, hard drinking, hard , just a hard person to get along with a lot of times.

He was just one of those unstoppable forces of nature that you come across,

once in a lifetime

  he had been having some chest pains and had been. Really having a couple of,

health scares. He went in for a routine health checkup.

they decided to give him a stress test and he ends up collapsing on the treadmill and having a heart attack.

 The doctors at that time decided that it was not optional. He had to have a open heart surgery that day. I was in college at the time. I remember,

calling home and finding out that my dad was in the hospital about to have a surgery and having to drive downtown Cleveland to Mount Sinai Medical Center, which was no longer there.

But that was the top heart surgery center in the area at the time. And

I remember meeting my mom and my older brother down. in the waiting room, waiting for my dad and meeting with the doctor and the doctor saying he was okay right then. And we had the opportunity to see him before he went into surgery. And my dad was

very scared that day. I was probably the most scared that I’d ever seen my dad ever.

This was not a man that showed fear. He was not a man that showed a lot of emotion. We, he was not somebody that said, I love you. He was not somebody who,

really ever, he was just not an emotional person in that way.

Showing fear was a sign of weakness. That was something that if you show fear, you show emotion, people are gonna try to use that against you. And he always, I feel like, kind of felt that way.   📍 Now, the day that he had a open heart surgery, my mom and my brother are there and the surgical waiting room and they said, okay, you can see your father one more time before he goes into surgery.

 And

none of us knew for sure if he’s gonna make it through the surgery. It was,

he’s going under general anesthesia, open heart surgery was still,

kind of back in those days was still a

really scary thing as I’m sure, I mean, obviously it’s still scary today. I wouldn’t, I would be scared to death if I had to go in there.

  📍 And I’ll never forget he was laying in a hospital bed and. as we walked in there. It was one of the few times my dad ever said, I love you. He said to my older brother, I love you, Chuck. He said to my mom, I love you, Marilyn. He said to me, I love you, John.

 And then he said the words that none of us would ever forget, and the words that I think that he regretted for the rest of his life. His last words before being taken into open heart surgery to be put under general anesthesia, cut open, have his heart , opened up and worked on and sewed back up and put together

a surgery that he had a

very real fear that he may not make it out of.

His last words were, if anything happens to me, take care of Trio.

I’ll never forget my brother, my mom and I, we looked at each other   📍 as he was wheeled away. He said that he, and then they took him away. That was it. We all looked at each other and said, wow.

For all intents and purposes, for everything that he knew, these were quite possibly his last ever words that he would ever say to his wife and his two sons.

 And the

very last words that he thought he would may ever say to us was, if something happens to me, take care of trio, his business, not take care of your mom, not take care of each other,

take care of the. . business ,

Imagine being 21 years old and your dad is going in for a surgery and he’s just had

a health scare that could have killed him, and he’s worried that he may never see you again in his last words instead of being,

I love you guys, is take care of the business.

They wheeled him into the surgery for the next few hours and we went and sat in the waiting room and on the monitors, the OJ Simpson car Chase played out that day.

Instead of worrying about my dad,

my mom and my brother and I sat down and stared at C N N on these, on these TVs and watched a white Bronco go on a low speed car chase for the next couple of hours.

 We watched and watched and watched and saw the crowds grow, watched the crowds with signs go OJ and all the cops pulling up behind, and the tension built and the drama built. .  We didn’t talk about my dad, we didn’t talk about that. We didn’t worry about him. We didn’t think about anything other than oj.

  📍 And then as he, they pulled into the mansion they pulled into his driveway and the police came up and just, they just are pulling in. And then the doctor came out and said, you can see your, you can see your husband and father. Now

the three of us, I’ll never forget this. We looked at each other and we looked at the TV and we looked at the doctor and we said, are you sure?

We were so engrossed into this car chase on TV with somebody we didn’t even know. And seeing how that turned, and we felt so disconnected from this man who we all loved and cared about, but who had neglected us in order to build this business and create this cash flow and build this life for us, that we were literally glued to this damn tv.

And when we, we, all three of us looked at each other and the realization hit us all at the same time. And we were like, whoa, stop. Let’s just go. And we all went back because we all realized in the same moment exactly what that really meant. And we , we all were, we discussed it years later, even about how guilty we felt that that was our first reaction in that time.

We went back and we saw my dad and he was okay.

When he came out of the hospital, he was a different person.

He remembered that those were his last words going into his surgery. He apologized for them. He was aghast that the last thing he was worried about was his business. He had dedicated so much of his life, so much of his energy, so much of his heart, so much of his soul to building this business, that it was truly the most important person, place, or thing in the world to him in that time.

Now, after his surgery, he became a completely different person. He stopped working so much. 📍 He prioritized time with his family, his. His wife, me, I was an adult at this point in college, but he, took time to spend time with me to try to find ways to work on projects with me. He tried to spend time working with my brother.

He no longer worked. 15 hour days, he would work, go to work, and even when he was there, he did everything he could to avoid stress. He was afraid of the health consequences of all the stress

now I, feel like after that though, he truly lost passion, not just for working in the way that he had, but he actually lost passion for the company itself. He. I think viewed 📍 trio instead of as the, the central focus of his life. I feel like he viewed it as the thing that almost killed him, and as much as he loved it and he loved the people, worked there for him and with him, as much as he loved owning the business as much as he loved the financial stability and rewards that it could supply.

I mean, this is a man who had worked his butt off and had made millions of dollars without a high school degree. As much as he loved the, business and the identity that he had built as being part of that business, I think for the first time in his life, he really realized what the sacrifice was, what the true cost of doing that was.

After that he, truly tried to connect with all of us in ways that he had never done before. And he wanted that work-life balance that he had never really had.

📍 He wanted connections with family. Later on when I had children myself, he, his top priority in life was to spend time with his grandchildren. He had never been like that before. He had had grandkids with his older kids, and while he had spent time with them, he’d, it was never his top 📍 priority. I feel like really, truly changed how we all felt about him.

I never forget the difference between when he went in for that surgery and how surreal it felt and how indifferent we had been because he had worked so much to build a business that supported all of us. And how disconnected from him we all felt. 📍 Because even though like my brother had worked for his company from the time he was 16 and saw him at work, he was a work dad.

He was his boss at work. He was not. Dad so much. There was such a disconnect there that he, I feel like he truly, did his best to remedy in his later years.

Now I’d like to say that everything had a absolutely happy ending. The, company eventually did close in 2009 during the recession, my, my dad retired 📍 comfortably, had significant savings, real estate investments and a large car collection.

And never had to worry about finances really until the day he died. And

📍 I feel like that is something that for him was important. He was able to provide a lifestyle that was able to allow him to retire comfortably. And then even after he passed, was able to provide for my mom to retire comfortably. So in the end, he had had a company that had gone on for over 40 years and had employed people, and provided a life for those people. and connections that we all share to this day.

Now, when he eventually got cancer and passed away,

it wasn’t like when he had his open heart surgery in 1994. He passed away in 2014. So 20 years had passed, and in 20 years he, I feel like he had really remade himself. He had remade the relationships he had with for 100% for sure, with me with my brother, with my mom with everybody that he possibly could, it was a much different,

He wasn’t asking us to take care of a business. He wasn’t asking us to make sure that anybody had money. He wasn’t asking any of that. He was just concerned that we took care of each other,

📍 that his grandchildren were happy, that his wife would have a secure life without him. And just that, honestly, that we all cared about one another and loved each other.

There was no OJ Chase this time. There was no, no anything like that. There was just, it was just love. And I think that’s probably the greatest accomplishment that this man had is he was able to build a life for himself and his family that provided for multiple generations at the time, raised children who went on and had quality lives for themselves.

He imparted values of perfectionism and hard work in all of us, and in the end, he’s missed by more people than he could probably count.