Young Willis, however, began showing inventive and mechanical skills at the early age of 11 and it thought that some of those skills, perhaps, were inherited from his mother, Elizabeth Haviland Carrier. It was Elizabeth who fixed family clocks, sewing machines and other mechanical items. Perhaps most importantly, Elizabeth taught Willis fractions and other mathematics and obviously captured the interest and imagination that would lead eventually to Willis becoming an engineer. Even though Willis lost his mother at an early age, years later he would say that she opened "a new world to me and gave me a pattern for solving problems that I have followed ever since.