The Enduring Dream…  An American Original

There’s never been anyone like Forrest C. Shaklee, Sr.  He lived through most of the twentieth century, always curious, always eager to learn, always ahead of his time.

By the time he reached his sixties, he had accomplished more than most people could fit into several lifetimes. At the time he reached the age when many people retire, he came up with an idea for a business that seemed at once radical and naive.

Dr. Shaklee’s goal was to change the world, person by person.  He would do this with products that improved people’s health and their harmony with nature.  His entrepreneurial business plan was based on a conviction that helping others is the best way to help oneself.

The Shaklee family at the turn of the century

In time, his ideas gained international recognition and praise.  His followers scattered the seeds of his success so that today millions reap the benefits of his ideas.

Whenever Dr. Shaklee was asked when his interest in health began, he would answer that it began with his birth.  He was born in a coal mining section of Iowa on a gloomy November day in 1894.  The midwife told his parents that their fragile baby had tuberculosis and was not likely to survive.   Doctors agreed.  But his parents weren’t ones to accept hard news without putting it to a test.

“My parents were determined to put an end to the negative head shaking,” Dr. Shaklee once wrote.   “Their deep, abiding faith in things natural led them to move to a farm in the north of the state, where the fertile soil produced the quality of nutritional substances my body needed.  Here I could enjoy the sunshine and breathe pure air.”

The family farm in Mooreland, Iowa

 

The senior Shaklees put aside medications that seemed to do little for the child.  All of the family’s food came from the farm garden.  As soon as the boy could stand, his father began exercising with him to strengthen the small arms and legs.  Forrest grew, alternating long afternoons of bed rest with games of catch, walks in the woods and even fencing lessons.  And gradually, the boy’s health improved. 

Forrist Shaklee in his 20s

 

By the time he was a teenager; Forrest was reading Bernard McFadden’s Physical Culture and working out with weights.  When he reached college, he was an athlete who played baseball, ran track, wrestled, boxed and lifted weights.

“It was not a miraculous cure, as some people said.  It was slow, but it was sure,” Dr. Shaklee said.  At the earliest possible age, he was made to understand that wellness has everything to do with good nutrition, a healthy environment and exercise.