Have you watched his movie? It’s a sad, heart-wrenching but with a happy ending rag to riches story of an American dream. In his stirring autobiography Chris Gardner details his journey from homeless single father to self-made millionaire. It is the gripping story of his refusal to give up on his quest for the American dream and his duties to his toddler son, or give into the despair that threatened to devour him from birth.The Pursuit of Happyness is an inspirational, coming-of-age memoir that bears the message that a hunger for learning, hard work, and never giving up on the people who make you truly “wealthy,” can break destructive cycles and propel anyone to unlimited heights - no matter who they are, where they come from, or what their circumstances may be. In 1982, Chris Gardner was just another go-getter in the training program at Dean Witter’s San Francisco office, making $1,000 a month. He was also homeless. Gardner couldn’t afford both day care for his 20-month-old son, whom he was raising alone, and a place to live. So for a year he and Chris Jr. slept where they could - cheap hotel rooms in West Oakland, a shelter at a church in the Tenderloin, under his office desk, even, on occasion, the bathroom at the Bay Area Rapid Transit MacArthur station.
He remembered the words of his mother, Bettye Jean Triplett, another single parent, who grew up during the Depression outside Rayville, La., where slavery was still a living memory: “You can only depend on yourself. The cavalry ain’t coming.” So Gardner worked, making 200 calls a day to snag clients for Dean Witter. “Every time I picked up the phone,” he recalls, “I knew I was getting closer to digging myself out of the hole.” Within five years he had opened his own institutional brokerage firm in Chicago called Gardner Rich, which is still thriving today. If you have not seen the movie, go watch now in the cinema.
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