Henry Ford

“Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.” The great words Henry Ford said over a hundred years ago, is still meaningful today. This quote defined the philosophy of Ford and the reason for his success over many failures during his lifetime. Ford truly believed in his dreams and would not allow his failures to deter him from succeeding.

Henry Ford, born July 30, 1863, was the oldest son of six children of William and Mary Ford. He grew up on a family farm in what is today Dearborn, Michigan. From an early age Ford showed interest in mechanical things and was not to fond of family farm chores. Ford was always getting into trouble for taking things apart and putting them back together and messing with different things on his fathers farm. Obviously, he had a keen interest of learning how things worked. Ford was always wanting to learn, he would even fix machinery on neighbors farms. He believed machines would one day replace farm animals and provide more efficient use of the farmers time.

A life-changing event happened to Ford when he was twelve years old; his mother, whom he was very close, died during childbirth. From then on he had a strained relationship with his father. His father wanted him to take over the family farm, but Ford had other plans and bigger dreams for his life. In 1880, at age seventeen, he left the family farm and went to Detroit, Michigan to become an apprentice machinist. After three years has an apprentice he became a full-fledged machinist. In 1883, Westinghouse

hired Ford to work on heavy steam engines that were used as equipment by farmers during the summer harvest. During the winters he returned to work on the family farm and began experimenting building a lighter steam engine. Around this time Ford met a lovely woman named Clara Bryant and after a short courtship, Ford and Clara married in 1889....