Chapter One – A Spark of Ambition

Herbert W. Armstrong was born on July 31, 1892, in Des Moines, Iowa, the oldest of five children—the others, Mabel (who died at age nine), Russell, and twins Dwight and Mary. The Armstrong family grew up in the Quaker religion. Their ancestors had migrated to America in the late 1600s with William Penn, a famous Quaker and the founder of Pennsylvania. Mr. Armstrong’s family line traces back to King Edward I of England.
For much of his childhood, Mr. Armstrong grew up surrounded by an extended family of aunts, uncles, grandparents and even great-grandparents, who lived into their 90s.

The early years of his life took place during the age of milkmen, streetcars and gas-powered streetlamps. It was a time when Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Britain’s Queen Victoria, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George Washington Carver, Theodore Roosevelt, the Wright brothers and other thinkers, leaders and inventors were making their mark in history.

Mr. Armstrong’s youth and early adulthood saw the birth and explosion of amazing inventions and exciting developments in science, technology and medicine, in a way that the world had never seen before: open-heart surgery, radio, hydroelectric energy, mass-produced automobiles, airplanes, turbine engines, motion pictures, X-ray technology, mass-produced cameras, subways, plastics, hydrogen-filled airships (zeppelins), internal combustion engines, electric batteries, fingerprinting, air conditioners, electric typewriters, electrical hearing aids, motor-powered lawn mowers, taxi cabs, motorcycles, photostats, freeze-drying, artificial joints, outboard motors, diesel locomotives, escalators and many other advancements taken for granted today.

Mr. Armstrong’s childhood was a happy one, filled with swimming, iceskating, bicycling and playing football, baseball, marbles, going to school, and growing up with childhood chums, several of whom went on to become successful men and leaders in their community.

He was an inquisitive little boy, who constantly peppered adults with questions of “Why?” and “How?” From his earliest memories, he craved understanding—he wanted to know the world around him and how it worked. When Mr. Armstrong was five, he remembered hearing his father, frustrated with his son’s many questions, say, “That young’un is always asking so many questions he’s sure to be a Philadelphia lawyer, when he grows up.”

(In a sense, Mr. Armstrong did become a “Philadelphia lawyer.” As the one God used to lead the Philadelphian Era of the Church Christ built, he had the greatest depth of knowledge and understanding of God’s Law of any man of his day. This will be explained later.)

Learning the Work Ethic

From age 12 to 16, Mr. Armstrong held various weekend and summer jobs: newspaper routes, running errands for a grocery store and a dry-goods store, being a draftsman for a furnace company, and other odd jobs.

At age 16, Mr. Armstrong came to a monumental, life-changing turning point. It happened at the end of his first summer job away from home, in which he waited on tables in the dining room of a semi-resort in a nearby town. The owner highly complimented his work, saying that he saw something within Mr. Armstrong that would lead him to great success.

From that moment, a spark of ambition ignited within him—Mr. Armstrong began to believe in himself. He grew in self-confidence. He wanted to be someone important—someone considered successful in the eyes of the world’s prominent businessmen and leaders. He wanted to be a “success”!

Looking back on this event years later, Mr. Armstrong recognized this as “grossly overrated self-confidence and cocky conceit.” However, even as a teen, he realized that most people drift through life, accepting whatever are the conditions into which they were born. Young Herbert Armstrong took his hunger and thirst for success and used it to develop his mind—to grow in knowledge and understanding, and improve himself. This burning desire became a driving force in his life.

Little could he know where this would take him.

Improving the Self

By the time summer vacation ended, and school was back in session, Mr. Armstrong set out to apply himself. He spent many hours at the public library, studying business administration, philosophy (Plato, Socrates and other thinkers), and the autobiographies of dynamic historic figures (such as Benjamin Franklin). He yearned to develop and expand his mind.

Mr. Armstrong also worked on developing his physical strength and endurance, participating in football, basketball, and track and field.

When he was 18, he discovered the book Choosing a Vocation, which he used to examine himself—his natural strengths and weaknesses. Through a thorough self-analysis survey, the book revealed that Mr. Armstrong would most likely achieve success in the fields of advertising and journalism.

It just so happened that his Uncle Frank was Iowa’s most prominent advertising executive. Recognizing that his uncle was a reservoir of practical experience and that he possessed “unusual insight, understanding, and sound judgment,” Mr. Armstrong turned to him for guidance.

On-the-Job Training

In those days, colleges and universities did not offer comprehensive, proven courses in advertising. So Frank Armstrong told his nephew that, with initiative and drive, he could achieve a general college-level education through intensive on-the-job training. He offered to help Mr. Armstrong find the right books to study, especially in the areas of advertising, journalism, psychology, merchandising, business management, and English. He encouraged his nephew to learn and to master an effective writing style, and to study ad copy and layout.

To begin his advertising career, Mr. Armstrong was advised to get one year’s experience in the want-ad department of a daily newspaper. This, his uncle told him, was the “freshman class” in advertising.

Brimming with self-confidence and drive, Mr. Armstrong went to The Des Moines Daily Capital. But instead of asking for a job, he boldly informed the want-ad department manager that he was entering the field of advertising, and that he decided to join his staff, since it offered the best opportunity to learn and to advance.

Naturally, the manager was taken aback by the young man’s assertiveness. But it grabbed his attention. Mr. Armstrong’s self-assurance paid off, and he was able to “hire himself a job,” as he put it, starting at the entry-level pay of $6 per week. (Remember, this was 1910.)

Mr. Armstrong was just as bold, driven and resourceful in how he worked, constantly searching for the most effective ways to sell room-for-rent ads to boarding room establishments. While other want-ad salesmen made their usual sales pitches, Mr. Armstrong devised several creative and efficient methods to sell his services, and quickly became known for his resourcefulness and drive. His ingenuity served him well, and he was promoted to selling real estate ads, with a $2 per week raise in pay.

The Register & Ledger, the competing newspaper, began to feel the pressure of Mr. Armstrong’s salesmanship. They offered to hire him away from their competitor, at $10 per week. Though tempting to a young man on the fast track, Mr. Armstrong turned to his uncle before making a hasty decision.

Frank Armstrong told him, “There’s a good deal to the old adage, after all, that a rolling stone gathers no moss. One of the great success lessons you need to learn is persistence—to stay with a thing.

“Now suppose you quit the Capital and go over to the Register. You wouldn’t learn any more about the advertising profession over there than you’re learning where you are. The only advantage is the $2 per week. You’d probably blow that…and ten years from now you wouldn’t remember having had it. I think the time has come for you to pay the $2 a week to learn the important lesson of stayingwith a thing. Every week, when you draw your $8 at the Capital, remember you are paying the extra $2 you might be getting at the Register as the price of that lesson, and I think you’ll remember it.”

Mr. Armstrong heeded his uncle’s advice.

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