Iacocca

My family's experience was my first teacher.—Iacocca One day in 1902, a passenger liner crowded with people sailed into New York Harbor. Among the dense crowd along the rail was a 12-year-old boy, who, like the many immigrants coming to America from around the world, hoped to live a prosperous life here. Suddenly his eyes lit up: he saw the legendary Statue of Liberty, the beacon of hope for countless immigrants. When this poor Italian boy named Nicola first set foot on the soil of this strange land, he moved his steps timidly, looking around, lonely and somewhat bewildered, not knowing where he should go. Recalling that scene years later, the grown boy said that the only thing he believed at the time was that the earth was round, because he knew that an Italian named Columbus had reached the Americas exactly 410 years before him. Nicola was from San Marco, a town about 25 kilometers north of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Like most immigrants, he too was full of ambition and hope. When he first arrived in America, he lived for a very short time with his half-brother in Gary, Pennsylvania. He once worked at a coal mine, but disliked the job intensely and quit after a single day. Because he was not paid, he later often said that this was the only day in his life he had ever worked for someone else. Before long he went to a small town called Allentown in eastern Pennsylvania, where another of his brothers lived. After that he did odd jobs, but mostly worked as a shoemaker.