Ewing Marion Kauffman moved to Kansas City with his family when he was eight years old. A critical event in his life occurred several years later when Kauffman was diagnosed with a leakage of the heart his prescription was one year of complete bed rest, he was not event allowed to sit up. Kauffman’s mother, a collage graduate, came up with a solution to keep the active 11 year old boy lying in bed reading. According to Kauffman, he ‘sure read! Because nothing else would do, I read as many as 40 to 50 books every month. When you read that much, you read anything. So I read the Bible twice and that’s pretty rough reading’.