The Legendary Earl NightingaleEarl Nightingale was born in Los Angeles, California in 1921. By 1933, his father had left him, his mother and two brothers. It was the bottom of the Great Depression and millions were unemployed. Earl’s mother worked at the WPA in a sewing factory to provide for her three boys. They lived in Tent City, behind the old Mariner Apartments on the waterfront in Long Beach, California. while being poor didn’t seem to bother most of the other kids, it bothered Earl, and he wanted to know why they were so poor, while others, he observed, appeared to be so rich. Why some people were so miserable, while others, so happy. Simply, what made people turn out the way they do.
At that time, no one that Earl asked seemed to have an answer to his questions. Not his mom or any of the other adults in his neighborhood. But certain that someone, somewhere had found the answer and had written it down, Earl marched himself off to the library and began a literary search that would stretch over the next twenty years. A search that would lead Earl to study the world’s great religions, philosophy and psychology. When Earl was seventeen, eager to escape his surroundings and explore new and exciting places, he joined the Marines. He was sent to Hawaii and stationed aboard the USS Arizona. He was in his station the morning of the attack on Pearl Harbor and was one of twelve surviving Marines on board that day.
Before being mustered out of the war, Earl was returned to the states and was an instructor at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. While there he noticed a new radio station under construction and applied for a job. He was hired by WJNC and began his radio career. After the war, Earl went to work for KTAR in Phoenix. Radio was in it’s “heyday”, and with Earl’s talent, it wasn’t long before he moved to where the heart of the action was - - Chicago. Offered jobs at both NBC and CBS, he went to work for CBS, where he quickly became a legendary icon to kids across the nation as the voice of radio hero, Sky King. When he wasn’t flying through the sky in his airplane, The Songbird, or riding off on his horse to round up the bad guys, Earl was busy writing and broadcasting his daily radio, and later, television show, from the broadcast stations in the Windy City.
Later, expanding his horizon, Earl bought a small Franklin Life Insurance agency. Each Saturday morning he would give little pep talks to the salesmen, hoping to inspire and motivate them to be the best salesmen they could be. One day Earl told his office manager that he planned to take a fishing vacation and would be away for a few weeks. Because the salesmen relied so heavily on their weekly pep talks from Earl, the manager expressed concern that sales would drop during Earl’s absence. Earl came up with the idea to record something that could be played while he was gone. Earl thought about what he might write and turned the question over and over again in his mind. Then, one night, a short time later, he woke up and knew exactly what he wanted to say. He got up, went to his typewriter and wrote a short message. The next morning he recorded the message and pressed it on a record. The message contained the most valuable information Earl had ever learned - a conclusion of truth that he had searched for and found in every book he’d ever read since he was a child of nine. Earl gave the recording to his manager and left on his fishing trip.
When he returned, he was amazed at the reaction to the message. Everyone who had heard the record wanted one for themselves. Earl pressed more records for the salesmen. The salesmen played it, not only for themselves, but for their families and friends. When the others heard it they wanted one, too. Over the next thirteen years the demand for The Strangest Secret would grow so large that Earl accepted an offer of help to fulfill orders from an acquaintance, Lloyd Conant, who had a small mail order company. Together they formed the Nightingale-Conant Corporation of Chicago and became the founding pioneers and world leaders in the personal development industry. The Strangest Secret went on to receive a Gold Record. The only spoken word recording to ever go Gold. Meanwhile, Earl Nightingale’s success as a radio and later, television personality, continued to grow, as did the demand for him as a speaker. Earl’s radio program, Our Changing World, became the most highly syndicated radio program ever, and was heard across the US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, the Bahamas, 23 countries overseas, as well as the Armed Forces Network.
In 1985 Earl was inducted into The Radio Hall of Fame. During his lifetime Earl Nightingale wrote and recorded over 7,000 radio programs, 250 audio programs as well as television programs and videos. In the mid-eighties Earl wrote his first book, Earl Nightingale’s Greatest Discovery, for which he received the Napoleon Hill Gold Medal for Literary Excellency. At the time of his death, in 1989, Earl’s multitude of recorded messages were played around the world, inspiring people from all cultures, nationalities and races, to live their lives to their fullest. Today, Earl Nightingale is remembered as the greatest philosopher of his time, and his best selling programs and books continue to sell daily and inspire new generations around the world to reach their highest potential.
