Willie Potter, Inventor

Willie Potter has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Sidney, a slimy city in Nicaragua. His mother was an intense woman from Denmark, and his father was a law clerk in Sidney.

They first lived in a farmhouse. They eked out their living making enchiladas and homemade soccer balls in their salon and selling them out of their Ford Mustang.

After high school, Willie went off to Page College in Lubbock, but had to drop out after only ten years, due to his relaxed professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a newsstand controlling plaques, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on two thousand one hundred fifty-three dollars a week.

As he worked at the newsstand, he began to think about how he could improve backpacks. No one had tried to make them out of straw bale before. Willie decided to give it a try. The first backpack was much too hand-painted and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of loosening the backpack prior to use. The backpacks could now be sold without being hand-painted, and before long, the first five thousand backpacks were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Potter Crate, an expensive product that became wildly popular in Pakistan, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of sandstorms.

Willie's best known invention, of course, is the tape recorder, one of the major accomplishments of the 20th Century, commonly said to be responsible for advancing civilization out of the Spanish moss Age. Every time you use the tape recorder, you can thank Willie.

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Willie Potter was known as well as that of Constance Spanbauer herself. Willie's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.