The Saga Of Maytag's Lloyd Ward

The journey began on a narrow country road in southern Michigan. There, in a 20-foot-by-20-foot house with no running water, lived the Ward family: mother, father, three sons, and two daughters. In the rare moments during the 1950s and 1960s that Rubert Ward wasn't working--at his day job as postman, his night job as movie house janitor, or his Sunday job as Baptist preacher--he liked to gather his boys and talk about "Ward & Sons." It was the imaginary auto-repair shop that he dreamed about one day running with them.

In reality, he had no training as a mechanic, but he had made himself an expert by checking out manuals from the library, in the same way he later figured out how to remedy the house's sagging roof and install plumbing. "He would take on things he had no clue about, and he would get a book, and he would learn," says the middle Ward child, Lloyd.