You may remember Chris Gardner from the movie Pursuit of Happyness, starring Will Smith.
If so, you already know the story.
He was a single father who pulled himself out of homelessness to become a millionaire
stockbroker.
But of course, like any movie based on a true story, it is going to have some parts that
only gloss over the events of a person’s life.
In today’s Biographics, we will tell you the true story rags-to-riches story of Chris
Gardner.
Early Life In order to understand how Chris Gardner found
the strength to pull himself out of poverty and on to becoming a millionaire, you need
to know the story of how he was raised.
His mother was Bettye Jean Gardner, and she grew up in a very poor community in the state
of Louisiana.
In the 1940’s, there were very few opportunities for black people outside of working on a farm.
Bettye wanted to get out of her small town and move on to bigger and better things.
She studied very hard, and graduated 3rd in her High School class.
Her goal was to go to college and become a full-time school teacher.
Unfortunately, her parents could not afford to help pay for her tuition.
Bettye got a job as a substitute teacher at the local school, instead.
This is where she met the man of her dreams; Samuel Salter.
He was handsome, college-educated, and great with kids.
The only problem?
Well, he was already married.
But he told her that he loved her, and planned to leave his wife so that he could marry her.
Bettye kept their relationship a secret, of course, and when she was 22, she got pregnant
with Salter’s child.
Suddenly, the situation became all too real, and he backed out on his promise to leave
his wife.
Bettye’s parents were ashamed, and refused to help her keep the baby.
All of Bettye’s brothers had already moved to Milwaukee.
New factories were opening on a regular basis, and there were plenty of blue collar job opportunities.
So she moved there to live with them.
She gave birth to her daughter, Ophelia, and began life as a single mom.
But unfortunately, she didn’t seem to realize that falling in love with another married
man would lead to heartbreak.
She had an affair with Thomas Turner, who was Chris’ biological father, and he also
refused to leave his wife to be with her.
Chris was born in 1954, and Bettye was raising her two children alone.
She finally decided it was time to date a single man who would be devoted to herr.
So she married a man named Freddie Triplett, who was very tall and muscular.
In his autobiography, Chris Gardner writes that Freddie was a frightening-looking giant,
and he cannot even fathom why his mother chose to be with him.
He was illiterate, with only a third-grade education.
He was also an alcoholic with a violent temper.
He would beat Bettye and the children, as well as pick up his shotgun and threaten to
shoot them.
Bettye had been on welfare, and she took on two jobs to earn enough money to leave Freddy.
When he found out about her plan, he reported to social services that she was working, and
should no longer qualify for welfare.
But this is a serious crime, because it’s considered welfare fraud.
The police showed up to arrest Bettye, and they didn’t care that she was pregnant with
her daughter, Sharon.
She spent the next 3 years in jail.
Freddie refused to take care of Ophelia and Chris, so they grew up in a foster home.
Baby Sharon was born in prison, and Freddie’s mother agreed to care for her.
When Bettye was eventually released, she regained custody of Chris and Ophelia.
Unfortunately, Bettye fell into the cycle of abuse- Freddie apologized, and promised
to change, so they got back together.
But he continued to beat her and the children.
Bettye knew that Freddie would never stop, so she burned the house down while he was
asleep, in an attempt to kill him.
Chris later said, “I can say, honestly, I’m sorry she didn’t succeed.”
But, Freddie survived, and she ended up going to jail a second time for the arson.
Chris and his siblings grew up being raised in various relative’s houses around Milwaukee.
Most of his childhood was spent playing unsupervised in the streets.
He became a target of child predator, and he was raped.
For some people, this would have been enough to destroy them, but Chris pushed down the
trauma and tried to move forward.
Later in life, he saw that same man again.
He picked up a nearby cinder block, smashed his rapist’s head with it, and left him
there to bleed.
When Bettye was released from prison, she made sure to instill her love for education
into her children.
She would take Chris to the public library, and she told him that anything he could ever
want to know was contained within those walls.
This felt like magic to him, and he excelled in school.
Even though all of Bettye’s dreams had been crushed, she was never pessimistic, and encouraged
her own children to succeed.
In his autobiography, Chris Gardner writes that there were two defining moments that
lead to his success.
The first was when he was 16 years old.
He was watching a March Madness NBA game, and sighed, saying out loud to himself; “One
day those guys are going to make a million dollars.”
His mother overheard him, and said, “Son, if you want to, one day YOU can make a million
dollars.”
For the first time in his life, he felt like he had permission to succeed.
He had no idea how he would become a millionaire, but he knew that he wanted to make it happen.
Life in San Francisco Since his mother could not afford to help
him go to college, Chris Gardner was willing to go wherever he needed to in order to pull
himself out of poverty.
He joined the Navy after High School, and spent 4 years serving as a medic.
He was stationed at the Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
During this time, he met a cardiac surgeon named Dr. Robert Ellis, who offered him a
medical research position at the University of California Medical Center in the Veterans
Hospital in San Francisco.
After two years, he became the manager of the medical laboratory, and co-authored several
research papers with Dr. Ellis.
On June 18th, 1977, he married a woman named Sherry Dyson, who was a math teacher from
Virginia.
When they first got married, Chris had plans to spend the next 10 years of his life working
in the lab while putting himself through medical school.
However, the medical field was beginning to change, it became more difficult and expensive
to enter the profession than ever before.
He decided that he would rather find a job that made money right away, instead of spending
so many years in school.
Sherry Dyson was disappointed that Chris was giving up the dream to become a doctor.
Their relationship was falling apart, and he met and fell in love with a dental student
named Jackie Medina.
Only three months into their affair, Jackie became pregnant with their child.
In 1980, Chris left his wife, and began living with his girlfriend Jackie, so that they could
raise their son together.
Throughout his childhood, Chris’ stepfather, Freddie Triplett would always tell him, “I
aint your daddy”, while holding a shotgun to his head.
Chris grew up wondering who his biological father actually was.
He swore to himself that some day, he would be the opposite of his stepfather.
He wanted to become the best father he could be, and he would never abandon or abuse his
own child.
At first, they were a happy family, and they were optimistic about their future.
But when Jackie graduated from dental school, she failed her board exams, which meant that
she could not work as a dentist.
She was forced to give up her dreams and become a stay-at-home mom.
The rent in San Francisco was too expensive for Jackie and Chris to pay on a single income,
so they had to move outside of the city.
The research position at the hospital only paid $7,500 per year, which was hardly enough
to support Jackie and his son.
He found a higher-paying job selling medical supplies to doctors in the Bay Area.
He was now making $25,000, and men who were higher up in the same industry made $80,000
a year.
To put this into perspective with modern-day inflation, this was more like leaving a $23,000-per-year
salary for a $76,000-per year job, with the potential to make $244,000.
Chris Gardner had everything going for him, and that memory of becoming a millionaire
was a distant memory.
But this all changed when he was 26 years old.
Chris was leaving his job, and was in the parking lot of the hospital.
A man driving a red Ferrari was circling the parking lot, looking for a spot.
He wore a suit, tie, and watch, and clearly looked incredibly successful.
Chris waved the man down, and said that he could have his parking space, in exchange
for information.
He asked, “What do you do, and how to you do it?”
The man told him that he was a stockbroker, and they agreed to meet for coffee the next
day.
He learned that the man’s name was Bob Bridges, and he gave Chris the run-down on the very
basics of the stock market.
This man was making $80,000 a month.
That’s all Chris needed to hear.
He decided that his new dream was to become a stockbroker.
But even back then, most trading firms required a minimum of an MBA before they would ever
consider hiring a rookie stockbroker.
But he continued to spend more and more time essentially apprenticing at Bob Bridge’s
firm.
Most of the skills needed to succeed in the stock market are learned on the job, and not
in school, so Chris was learning how it could be possible for him to make a tremendous amount
of money, if only he was given the opportunity to work for a firm.
Bob Bridges helped him to secure interviews with various investment firms that offered
training programs, but they kept saying “no”.
To make matters worse, he racked up parking tickets every time he went on an interview...This
sounds like a trivial detail, but those parking tickets would come back to bite him in a big
way.
Jackie wasn’t convinced.
From her perspective, Chris was skipping out on sales calls to chase after a pipe dream.
She called him “delusional”, and was frustrated and angry that he was neglecting his real
job.
In her defense, she had very good reasons to be concerned, and she already knew from
her failure what it was like to work hard towards something for years, only for it to
fall apart in the end.
Despite the fact that she did not believe in him, Chris continued to learn, and interviewed
at as many firms as he could.
After an entire year, he was offered a chance to join an unpaid internship position to become
an entry-level trainee.
There was no guarantee that he would even get the trainee job.
If he did, he would be taking a huge pay cut compared to what he made as a medical supply
salesman.
The one major difference was, of course, that as a stockbroker, there is no ceiling to how
much you can make, and he wanted to be a millionaire.
Finally, after trying and failing for over a year, Chris Gardner finally got accepted
into the training program of a firm called E.F. Hutton.
He quit his job as a medical supply salesman, because he was confident that things were
only going up from there.
Tragically, though, just a week later, when he showed up for the first day on the job,
there was a new hiring manager working at E.F. Hutton.
They looked at his resume, and retracted the job offer.
Just like that, in an instant, Chris’ life began to crumble.
He had to go home to tell Jackie that he quit his sales job, and wasn’t going to work
for E.F. Hutton, either.
She was upset, but he tried his best to make ends meet.
He began to get odd jobs like cutting lawns, and continued to work towards becoming a stock
broker.
But he and Jackie began to get into more and more arguments.
One day, during a particularly bad fight, their neighbors called the police, because
they believed that it may escalate into domestic violence.
When the police officer checked his record, he saw all that Gardner racked up $1,200 in
unpaid parking tickets.
He did not have the ability to pay them, so he was taken to jail, and held for ten days.
During those ten days, all he could think about was his son.
He didn’t want his little boy to believe that his father had left him.
He was scheduled to show up for his interview for a new internship at a firm called Dean
Witter Reynolds on the 9th day, 24 hours before he was set to be released.
He figured that he would never make it, and that would be the end of his dream.
But, he asked the police officer if he could make a phone call to reschedule his appointment.
Technically, he was not allowed to make a second phone call, but the officer broke the
rules to let him do it.
“Nothing will ever convince me that it was anything other than the hand of God.”
Chris was released from prison the next morning at 6AM, and he rushed home to his apartment
to take a shower and get on a suit before the interview.
By the time he got there, Jackie had cleared out the apartment, and their bank account.
“She had taken everything but the dust.
But, most importantly, she had taken my little boy.”
He was forced to show up to his interview at Dean Witter Reynolds wearing the same clothes
he had been arrested in ten days earlier.
Miraculously, he got accepted into the training program.
Becoming Homeless When Jackie left him, she also took all of
the money they had been saving for rent.
So Chris was kicked out of the apartment.
He continued earning a very small amount of money from cutting grass and painting, which
was enough to pay for a single room in a boarding house.
He began going to his training program during the day to take his classes, and only came
back to the tiny room to go to sleep.
Just three months after leaving him, Jackie returned to find Chris.
She realized that she did not want to be a single mother, and she wanted to try to rebuild
her medical career.
So, she asked Chris to take their son.
He gladly took Chris Jr. back, and agreed to take sole custody over him, while Jackie
moved on with her life, and never looked back.
However, the boarding house did not allow children, and they forced them to leave.
Many of the men’s homeless shelters would not accept children, either, or they would
fill up too quickly before he was able to receive any food or shelter.
Chris never panhandled, and he tried his best to hide the fact that he was homeless.
He always wore a suit, and pushed his son around in his stroller.
To most people passing on the street, they would assuming that he was just another father
going somewhere.
However, the local sex workers took notice to Chris walking through the ghetto the same
time every night, and figured out what was going on.
These ladies of the night would slip $5 bills to his toddler, Chris Jr.
Their kindness, together with his work mowing lawns on the weekends was just enough money
to help them survive.
Even then, they were barely held on by a thread.
Gardner said, “It was a choice: Do we eat, or stay in a hotel?
We chose to eat.”
Chris was always on the move, and they would find places to sleep wherever they could.
Sometimes, friends would let them sleep on their couch.
Other times, when he worked late into the night at the firm, he and his son would hide
under his desk to sleep in the office.
When there was no other option, Chris would lock them in the subway station bathroom.
They were able to clean themselves in the bathroom sink, and lay down on the floor to
sleep.
When he closed his eyes, he still dared to dream of wearing a new suit, and driving a
red Ferrari.
In one of his darkest moments, Chris was feeling overwhelmed, and an incredible amount of self-doubt.
He had to give his son a bath by candlelight, because there was no electricity where they
were staying.
Just when he felt ready to give up, his tiny son said, “You know what?
You’re a good Papa.”
This was enough to keep him going.
Chris began going to church to listen to a man named Reverend Cecil Williams speak on
Sunday mornings.
Chris was standing in food lines, and the reverend couldn’t help but notice him, because
there were countless homeless single mothers, but he was the only single father.
Cecil Williams had a program for these mothers at the Glide Memorial Methodist Church.
Once Chris found out about the program, he asked the reverend if he could make an exception,
and let them in.
So, he did.
Finally, Chris Gardner and his son had a place where they knew they were guaranteed to have
a roof over his head.
Finding Success After this year-long unpaid internship, Chris
Gardner passed his Series 7 exam, and officially became a stockbroker.
He got a job at the San Francisco-based firm, Bear Stearns & Company.
He was finally paid a base salary of $1,000 a month, which is $2,354 after modern inflation.
It was enough for Chris to start renting a studio apartment for himself, and his son.
They were no longer homeless.
But, of course, he didn’t stop there.
Now that he finally had his opportunity to work in that field, Chris Gardner completely
devoted his life to becoming the best stockbroker he could possibly be.
He showed up early, stayed late, and worked ten times harder than everyone else.
In 1987, he began another nearly-impossible dream by starting his own firm called Gardner
Rich & Co with just $10,000 of his own money.
Through hard work and persistence, he was able to gather enough clients until his firm
was incredibly successful.
Today, he has an estimated net worth of $60 million.
And yes, he did buy a Ferrari Testarossa.
But it wasn’t just any Ferrari.
It once belonged to Michael Jordan.
Gardner changed the license plate to say “NOT MJ”.
Chris Gardner wrote his autobiography called The Pursuit of Happyness, and it became a
bestseller.
In 2006, a movie version of his life was filmed starring Will Smith.
After the movie was complete, Smith and his wife were so moved by the story, that they
decided to donate $75,000 to the homeless shelter run by Reverend Cecil Williams.
Chris Gardner continues to volunteer at the soup kitchen, as well as give financial donations.
After the premiere of the movie in 2006, the United States entered the financial crisis
just two years later.
For years, there was a stigma that people only became homeless if they were mentally
ill, or drug addicts.
But the recession taught us that in a time of crisis, it can truly happen to anyone,
even if they did everything “right” in their lives.
The movie of Chris Gardner’s life began to resonate with people years beyond the movie’s
initial release, and he has been invited to speak to help inspire people at countless
public events.
In 2010, Chris Gardner said during a speech, “We have, in fact, seen the creation of
a whole new class of homeless.
Something I call ‘white collar homeless’.
Went to school, played by the rules, colored within the lines... *snaps fingers* Then the
world changes, just like that.”
If we can learn anything from the story of Chris Gardner, it’s that bad lack could
make things in our lives fall apart.
Maybe we won’t hit absolute rock bottom.
But life happens, whether we are ready for it, or not.
And no matter how many times we have fumbled, it’s still possible to pull ourselves back
up, and keep going towards our dreams, no matter how crazy they may seem.