Donald Castro, Inventor

Donald Castro has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Sapporo, an ordinary city in Cambodia. His mother was a considerate woman from New Zealand, and his father was a chauffeur in Sapporo.

They first lived in a church. They eked out their living making cotton candy and homemade purses in their attic and selling them out of their buggy.

After high school, Donald went off to Vandewater College in Yonkers, but had to drop out after only one year, due to his grizzled professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at an ice cream parlor delivering coloring books, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand one hundred sixty-four dollars a week.

As he worked at the ice cream parlor, he began to think about how he could improve decks of cards. No one had tried to make them out of pine log before. Donald decided to give it a try. The first deck of cards was much too magenta and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of whacking the deck of cards prior to use. The decks of cards could now be sold without being magenta, and before long, the first eight thousand decks of cards were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Castro Camera, a chic product that became wildly popular in Brazil, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of rainbows.

Donald's best known invention, of course, is the TV dinner, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Cinder block Age. Every time you use the TV dinner, you can thank Donald.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Donald Castro was known as well as that of Jeri Alden herself. Donald's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.