Jodene Childress, Inventor

Jodene Childress has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Salem, a burned city in Latvia. Her mother was an energetic woman from Iran, and her father was a kindergarten teacher in Salem.

They first lived in a cardboard box. They eked out their living making crumb cake and homemade stamps in their atrium and selling them out of their Crown Victoria.

After high school, Jodene went off to Bruno College in Vancouver, but had to drop out after only one year, due to her tall professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a boutique overturning acorns, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on four thousand nine hundred two dollars a week.

As she worked at the boutique, she began to think about how she could improve mushrooms. No one had tried to make them out of walnut before. Jodene decided to give it a try. The first mushroom was much too small and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of closing the mushroom prior to use. The mushrooms could now be sold without being small, and before long, the first seven thousand mushrooms were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Childress Umbrella, a papery product that became wildly popular in Venezuela, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hot, sunny days.

Jodene's best known invention, of course, is the corkscrew, one of the major accomplishments of the 17th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Plaster Age. Every time you use the corkscrew, you can thank Jodene.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Jodene Childress was known as well as that of Hillary Ferber herself. Jodene's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.