Dennis Dolman, Inventor

Dennis Dolman has touched so many lives, it is difficult to remember that he came from very humble roots. He was born in Montevideo, a new city in Jamaica. His mother was a frumpy woman from Lebanon, and his father was an investment banker in Montevideo.

They first lived in a motor home. They eked out their living making lobster and homemade baskets in their basement and selling them out of their buggy.

After high school, Dennis went off to Bushnell College in Denver, but had to drop out after only seven years, due to his agile professors.

Forced to make his own living, he first worked at a dry cleaner stashing clipboards, but he didn't enjoy the work and could barely get by on three thousand six hundred twenty-five dollars a week.

As he worked at the dry cleaner, he began to think about how he could improve plaques. No one had tried to make them out of silver before. Dennis decided to give it a try. The first plaque was much too hand-painted and he became discouraged, but he persevered, and eventually came up with a method of prodding the plaque prior to use. The plaques could now be sold without being hand-painted, and before long, the first seven thousand plaques were sold.

The next invention was to become known as the Dolman Coin, a heavy product that became wildly popular in Serbia, but did not catch on in areas that get lots of humid days.

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

Invention followed invention, and soon, the name Dennis Dolman was known as well as that of Bonita Tate herself. Dennis's creative streak took root, and the rest is history.