Life Essentals

Life Essentals

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
I talked with Cathy Smith, CEO of a company called Life Essentials, and asked her to tell us about her business. I incorporated Life Essentials back in 2002, the idea and the name of Life Essentials started probably 20 years before that. A gentleman that lived here by Wolcott, Indiana, got polio at the age of five. His dad farmed and his dad didn't accept the fact that he had polio. He had braces on. He couldn't walk, had to use crutches. His dad says, you're going to do the same work as your brothers, we'll just find you a different way of doing it. So he was expected to work on the farm, but when he got older, he married and he actually bought a farm. I guess he was going to some equipment dealers, and one dealer laughed at him and said, How are you going to farm when you can't even walk? So he went to a new dealership and that one actually earned his business for the next 20 some years. So he made a lift. It went on the side of his combine. The combine is the hardest thing to get into as far as the farm equipment, but he made a lift. Somebody at Purdue University, saw or heard about it, came out and talked to him about it and wanted him to help a group of grad students come up with ways to get farmers in wheelchairs, out of the wheelchairs and into their tractors and combines. So he started that and then it kind of was a hobby for years. And then in 2002, we turned it into a regular business and we go all over the country installing and making lifts to get farmers out of their wheelchairs into their tractors and combines and get farmers to work again.
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