Adorable Story #62: John W. Rollins
How a farm boy from Georgia went on to found 7 listed companies
“You gotta know when to go and know when to fold. Sometimes I’ve folded a little late”
—John W. Rollins
John W. Rollins started as a Georgia farm boy, then went on to found seven companies later taken public on the New York Stock Exchange and served as the 14th lieutenant governor of Delaware. He has been a friend and confidante of governors, senators and Presidents.
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Early years
John W. Rollins was born on August 24, 1916, in a three-room farmhouse in the red clay hills of northern Georgia. After an accidental fall, his father became an invalid when John was only 12 years old.
From that moment on, alongside their mother Claudia, John and his brother Orville Wayne tended the family’s farm in Keith, Georgia.
John graduated from Cohutta High School in Georgia and then left home to find his fortune: he worked at various jobs, including a construction worker, ditch digger, government inspector and factory manager before settling in Delaware in 1945.
He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he wanted to put the years of “plowin’ that mule” behind him.
“I never had any big preconceived plans,” he said. “I just ran like hell on whatever track I was on and I tried to get an education.”
John Rollins went to night school and took correspondence classes.
He always had an entrepreneurial spirit and his humble beginnings laid the foundation for his business acumen: in 1945 he made his first investment, USD 500, matched by a partner and coupled with a USD 10,000 loan from a bank, to buy a Ford dealership in Lewes, Delaware.
John Rollins then aggressively expanded his business by buying other dealerships in Maryland and Virginia.
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