Biography of Chris Gardner

1459 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Domestic violence and its effects on children pdf

On the 9th of February 1954, in Milawukee Wisconsin, a baby boy was born to Thomas Turner and Bettye Jean Gardner, a boy who would later become one of the world’s most influential and successful entrepreneurs, (Gardner, 2014). Chris Gardner faced many challenges in his childhood that helped shape the man he is today. Not only did he grow up in an abusive household, but also had to face the horror of him and his siblings being sent to foster care after his mother was falsely imprisoned for welfare fraud by his step-father, and later convicted for attempted murder of his step-father, (Horsfield, 2012). Gardner was fortunate enough to become acquainted to a late Henry, who had a profound influence on his life as a father figure. Gardner’s mother, through her periods of absence, was also a source of encouragement, inspiration and strength as she tried to instil the value of self-reliance and self-belief in him, (Horsfield, 2012). “The cavalry ain’t coming. You can only depend on yourself.” was a quote from his mother that he carried throughout his childhood experiences of alcoholism, domestic abuse, poverty, illiteracy and fear, (Gardner, 2014). He was determined to escape from all these experiences and build a different and brighter future for himself. Politics and music became a huge interest for Gardner in the late 1960’s and 1970’s. He inspired himself with the works of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr and Eldridge Cleaver, to name a few, and expanded his world view by educating himself with south African historical events such as the Sharpeville massacre, apartheid and international racial issues, (Horsfield, 2012). After completing secondary schooling, Gardner enlisted into the U.S Navy, inspired by his Uncle Henry, and was ass... ... middle of paper ... ...C. (2014). chris-gardner-biography.html. Retrieved May 17, 2014, from http://www.chrisgardnermedia.com: http://www.chrisgardnermedia.com/chris-gardner-biography.html Group, T. A. (2014). artist/chris-gardner/. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from http://www.theagencygroup.com/: http://www.theagencygroup.com/artist/chris-gardner/ Horsfield, P. (2012). /chris-gardner. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from www.thextraordinary.org: http://www.thextraordinary.org/chris-gardner Magazine, S. (2013). article/chris-gardner-homeless-to-happyness. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from http://www.success.com/: http://www.success.com/article/chris-gardner-homeless-to-happyness Yang, J. L. (2006, September 15). magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/18/8386184/index.htm. Retrieved May 18, 2014, from www.money.cnn.com: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/09/18/8386184/index.htm

Show More
Related

  • Another Place at the Table: Synopsis

    1299 Words  | 3 Pages

    The foster care system, then as now was desperate for qualified homes. Kathy and her husband had become certified foster parents, she was a certified teacher, and they had empty beds in their home. Their phone soon bega...

    Read More

  • The Other Wes Moore Essays: The Story In A Tough Environment

    1413 Words  | 3 Pages

    In their respective life journey, both Wes Moores often found them facing with some hard choices or decision to make or standing at a crossroads of life change without knowing which way to turn. Therefore, “for all of us who live in the most precarious places in this country, our destinies can be determined by a single stumble down the wrong path or a tentative step down the right one” (Moore xiv). During their early childhood, both Wes Moores struggle at school and had troubles with the law. However, for the author Wes Moore, attending the military school was the biggest turning point in his life. Aware of his mother’s determination, his family’s sacrifice, and encouragement from classmates and instructors as well as the influence of role models, the author Wes Moore finally made up his mind that he wanted to succeed in the military school. At the end, the author Wes Moore fulfilled his dream and did well academically from then on. On the other hand, the other Wes Moore had tumbled on a series of missteps along the road: dropping out of school, getting involved with drug trade, committing violent crimes, and being a father of four when he was so young and immature. Even though there was a time when he tried to reinvent himself: joining the Job Corp, getting a high school diploma, and finding some decent jobs, the reality and his making-quick-money mentality eventually brought him back to the original path with no return. At last, by committing an armed robbery that left a police officer dead, the other Wes Moore irreversibly drove himself to the dead end of life. Obviously, based on their early life experiences, both Wes Moores would have gone the same route to failure. Nevertheless, at some critical points of their lives, the author Wes Moore made some good choices with intervention and guidance of good people while the other Wes Moore lost his footing under undue

    Read More

  • John Ames Relationship

    705 Words  | 2 Pages

    The relationship between a father and a son can be expressed as perhaps the most critical relationship that a man endures in his lifetime. This is the relationship that influences a man and all other relationships that he constructs throughout his being. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead explores the difficulty in making this connection across generations. Four men named John Ames are investigated in this story: three generations in one family and a namesake from a closely connected family. Most of these father-son relationships are distraught, filled with tension, misunderstanding, anger, and occasionally hostility. There often seems an impassable gulf between the men and, as seen throughout the pages of Gilead, it can be so intense that it creates

    Read More

  • Richard Wright National Freedom Day

    856 Words  | 2 Pages

    Picture this, having to travel over 10,000 miles to get something you really wanted accomplished. This is one of the interesting points Mitch Kachun brings up about Mr. Wright in his essay “Major Richard R. Wright Sr. National Freedom Day, and the Rhetoric of Freedom in the 1940’s. In this essay he not only tells the very interesting story of Wright’s life but he also goes in details about everything that came up in his way and what he did to change the world and mold it to what we see today. One thing Kachun reminds us in this paper is to never forget or past and where we came from, because if we do we will repeat it. Also to pay our respects to a wonderful man who paved the way for us African American college students to be in the place that we are today.

    Read More

  • Man Child and the Promised Land

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the book, “Manchild in the Promised Land,” Claude Brown makes an incredible transformation from a drug-dealing ringleader in one of the most impoverished places in America during the 1940’s and 1950’s to become a successful, educated young man entering law school. This transformation made him one of the very few in his family and in Harlem to get out of the street life. It is difficult to pin point the change in Claude Brown’s life that separated him from the others. No single event changed Brown’s life and made him choose a new path. It was a combination of influences such as environment, intelligence, family or lack of, and the influence of people and their actions. It is difficult to contrast him with other characters from the book because we only have the mental dialoged of Brown.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of I Just Want To Be Average By Mike Rose

    843 Words  | 2 Pages

    discusses his life as a kid, and how he was accidentally placed in a vocational program in his

    Read More

  • The Other Wes Moore

    1132 Words  | 3 Pages

    This has shaped me to be who I am today, because I greatly appreciate what I have and take advantage of the opportunities I am given because not everyone is lucky enough to have what one has family plays and will always play a big influence in our lives and in this novel, we are given a great example of how it does. Although Wes didn’t know his father for long, the two memories he had of him and the endless stories his mother would share with him, helped guide him through the right path. His mother, made one of the biggest changes in Wes’s life when she decided to send him to military, after seeing he was going down the wrong path. Perhaps, the other Wes’s mother tried her best to make sure he grew up to be a good person, but unfortunately Wes never listened.

    Read More

  • Karen Tei Yamashita's Tropic of Orange

    2233 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Visualize Child Protective Services (CPS) walking up to your home to take your children away from you. Now picture this, picture what the children feel like escorted away from their parents left to wonder where they will end up.” Says Larry in the beginning of our interview. “Many children experience these thoughts as they walk out the front door of what they call home.” What can we do to ease the anxiety of these young children taken away from parents? Kinship care is one viable option that can ease the worry for children. However, kinship care is not the only placement for children who are taken away from their homes. Other out-of-home placements include group homes, residential treatments, private child welfare institutions, shelters, and even correctional facilities. “Children need a stable and healthy environment” says Larry the Vietnam Veteran. Kinship care is safe and can help many children by preparing them for a successful future. In this essay, I will have two main sections interviewing a Veteran friend of mine named Larry Pearson, whom served in the Vietnam War. The first section of this essay will be titled “Crabs”, which will discuss how all things came together in Larry’s life just as the critters all came together in the home in Mexico in the book “Tropic of Orange.” Many people made their way to the plot, just as many people were placed in Larry’s life, and this has played a major part in my life as well. The second section will be titled “Orange”. The orange in the book “Tropic of Orange” symbolized magic and dreams, so in this section of my paper I will discuss the great benefits of Larry’s decision to serve in Vietnam War. I will use Larry’s life to explain how I have linked together with variations of people ...

    Read More

  • W.E.B Du Bois vs. Booker T Washington

    2086 Words  | 5 Pages

    When talking about the history of African-Americans at the turn of the twentieth century, two notable names cannot be left out; Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois. They were both African-American leaders in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s, fighting for social justice, education and civil rights for slaves, and both stressed education. This was a time when blacks were segregated and discriminated against. Both these men had a vision to free blacks from this oppression. While they came from different backgrounds, Washington coming from a plantation in Virginia where he was a slave, and Du Bois coming from a free home in Massachusetts, they both experienced the heavy oppression blacks were under in this Post-Civil War society. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois were both pioneers in striving to obtain equality for blacks, yet their ways of achieving this equality were completely different. W.E.B Du Bois is the more celebrated figure today since he had the better method because it didn’t give the whites any power, and his method was intended to achieve a more noble goal than Washington’s.

    Read More

  • Child Welfare Case Study

    721 Words  | 2 Pages

    For the purpose of this paper the social worker interviewed is Ronnita Waters, MSW, RCSWi; she is currently an operations manager at the Center for Family and Child Enrichment (CFCE). The issue or area where her advocacy skills are practiced is within child welfare. Mrs. Waters mentions to the interviewee “I always wanted to work with children, then eventually for children.” when asked what developed her interest in this area of social work. Furthermore, before she became an operations manager, the social worker was an adoptions supervisor, overseeing adoption case managers and ensuring the proper implementation of policies such as the sibling placement policy and adoption policy. In addition, before achieving the role of supervisor, she was

    Read More

  • The History and Progression of the Foster Care System

    2496 Words  | 5 Pages

    ...t with a child in the foster care system. This paper gave me the opportunity to learn the positives and the negatives as well as more details about the little parts of the foster care system that I didn’t know existed. Even though my focus is to help the child and think about their best interest, this paper showed me that the parents, both biological and foster, are another important factor that helps the children. It made me realize that I will need to meet the parents and work with them to make a plan that fits their life. I will need to figure out what issues they feel are important to fix and how to get to those solutions. Foster care is a complex system that will challenge me daily if I enter the into this specific field but even if I work with children in a different environment I need to be aware that children come from all different types of backgrounds.

    Read More

  • The Civil Rights Movement : Robert F. Williams

    1483 Words  | 3 Pages

    Robert F. Williams was one of the most influential active radical minds of a generation that toppled Jim Crow and forever affected American and African American history. During his time as the president of the Monroe branch of the NAACP in the 1950’s, Williams and his most dedicated followers (women and men) used machine guns, Molotov cocktails, and explosives to defend against Klan terrorists. These are the true terrorists to American society. Williams promoted and enforced this idea of "armed self-reliance" by blacks, and he challenged not just white supremacists and leftists, but also Martin Luther King Jr., the NAACP, and the civil rights establishment itself. During the 1960s, Williams was exiled to Cuba, and there he had a radical radio station titled "Radio Free Dixie." This broadcast of his informed of black politics and music The Civil Rights movement is usually described as an nonviolent / peaceful call on America 's guilty conscience, and the retaliation of Black Power as a violent response of these injustices against African Americans. Radio Free Dixie shows how both of these racial and equality movements spawned from the same seed and were essentially the same in the fight for African American equality and an end to racism. Robert F. Williams 's story demonstrates how independent political action, strong cultural pride and identity, and armed self-reliance performed in the South in a semi-partnership with legal efforts and nonviolent protest nationwide.

    Read More

  • Music During the Vietnam War

    1287 Words  | 3 Pages

    Before the war started, a wealthy white man by the name of John Hammond worked to integrate black and white music.1 Since his childhood, he enjoyed the music of numerous black artists, and he wanted to share his love with the rest of America. He used much of his inherited fortune to make this possible. He went against the general opinion of society and his parents, who despised black people. Hammond refused to ignore black artists’ musical abilities because of their color, “I did not revolt against the system, I simply refused to be a part of it.”2 He used his money to organize the most eclectic group of musicians ever assembled, for an integrated audience of his time. Hammond’s efforts made an indelible impact on the music industry. The musicians Hammond introduced in...

    Read More

  • The Negative Impact Of Foster Care On Children As A Social Problem

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Children’s Aid Society in 1854 developed the Orphan Train program a predecessor to foster care. Charles Loring Brace believed that this would give children the chance of a good life by giving them the opportunity to live with “morally standing farm families”(Warren,

    Read More

  • Music Played Key Role in US Civil Rights Movement

    3700 Words  | 8 Pages

    Schneider, M. (2002). We return fighting : the civil rights movement in the Jazz Age. Boston: Northeastern University Press

    Read More

More about Biography of Chris Gardner

Open Document