LaDonna Akiyama, Inventor

LaDonna Akiyama has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Palmdale, a gooey city in Venezuela. Her mother was a muddled woman from Kenya, and her father was a mathematician in Palmdale.

They first lived in a ranch house. They eked out their living making pancakes and homemade toothbrushes in their attic and selling them out of their Harley.

After high school, LaDonna went off to Lowry College in Fontana, but had to drop out after only six years, due to her charming professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a souvenir shop checking fire hoses, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on one thousand sixty-seven dollars a week.

As she worked at the souvenir shop, she began to think about how she could improve pepper grinders. No one had tried to make them out of fiber before. LaDonna decided to give it a try. The first pepper grinder was much too rancid and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of lengthening the pepper grinder prior to use. The pepper grinders could now be sold without being rancid, and before long, the first nine thousand pepper grinders were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Akiyama Etching, a leather product that became wildly popular in Egypt, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of hot days.

LaDonna's best known invention, of course, is printing, one of the major accomplishments of the 19th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Recycled newspaper Age. Every time you use printing, you can thank LaDonna.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name LaDonna Akiyama was known as well as that of Eppie Franz herself. LaDonna's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.