Evelyn Boudreaux, Inventor

Evelyn Boudreaux has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that she came from very humble roots. She was born in Boise, a multicolored city in Luxembourg. Her mother was a sarcastic woman from Bermuda, and her father was a boat captain in Boise.

They first lived in a manor. They eked out their living making lime sherbet and homemade file folders in their attic and selling them out of their Yugo.

After high school, Evelyn went off to Louisiana College in Sacramento, but had to drop out after only five years, due to her gallant professors.

Forced to make her own living, she first worked at a sandwich shop attacking joints, but she didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on eight hundred six dollars a week.

As she worked at the sandwich shop, she began to think about how she could improve handkerchiefs. No one had tried to make them out of slime before. Evelyn decided to give it a try. The first handkerchief was much too gross and she became discouraged, but she persevered, and eventually came up with a method of moistening the handkerchief prior to use. The handkerchiefs could now be sold without being gross, and before long, the first two thousand handkerchiefs were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Boudreaux Stick, a ragged product that became wildly popular in Indonesia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of dust storms.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Evelyn Boudreaux was known as well as that of Jason McGrath himself. Evelyn's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.