When his school closed down when he was 13 years old, that was the end of his formal education. He then hit the road at a young age and began a life’s journey that would take him to West Virginia where e went door-to-door selling telephones at a time when people were getting phones in their homes for the first time. He ran a garage, a golf course, a restaurant, a bakery, a parking lot, and a house-cleaning business.