When Kettering came on the scene he sized the situation up in much the same way he approached all of the other problems that he solved in mechanics. chemistry and electronics. First he understood the whole problem. It turned out that the little girl had spent many hours with her grandmother who was unable to hold the little girl on her lap and read to her in a more standard way so she would read to her by placing a book on a stool in between two chairs that faced each other and would read to her as the girl looked on upside down. Kettering knew from this that the girl was smart and motivated and could adapt to any condition. He hit on a plan that worked perfectly with no emotional damage or condemnation of the child. He merely borrowed a music stand from someone in the community and placed her book upside down in front of her. Since when a book is mounted upside down this way, it is 180 degrees out of the usual reading position. Kettering then turned the music stand's music holder 5 degrees clockwise every Monday during the school year. As the year progressed, the girl found herself reading at 175 degrees out of the usual then 170 then 165 etc... By the end of the year she was reading just the way everyone else was and Kettering had done it without making her feel as though she was different, strange or wrong. He honored her as an individual at the same time he was correcting her because he followed his own admonition to understand the the problem deeply enough that the solution became obvious. This was an example, he said, of "letting the problem be the boss".

The trouble that most people get into when they run into a problem they have never experienced before, he explained was they immediately try to fit it into what they know. The more educated and expert the person the greater is that tendency. Kettering advanced the idea that true solutions to problems come not from trying to fit every question to the answers you already know but from meeting the problem on its own ground and letting it teach you what you need to know to understand it and solve it. Once, Kettering said, you let the problem be the boss and do not try to bend it to fit your small view of the world, you begin to grow in power and ability.

I was captivated listening to Kettering talk because he had clarity of expression that perfectly reflected the genius of his insight. He made you feel as though his understanding was your understanding. Somehow I felt that this very practical man was so clear and so pragmatic that he paradoxically was talking in a perfectly spiritual and transcendent way about these quintessentially down to earth matters. He offered a glimpse into the core of our relationship with the real world and because of this he was seeing too into very fiber of the order of the universe.

I looked forward to these programs and must have heard each one of them a half dozen times. I read as much as I could find about Kettering in the library too. I took him and his philosophies to heart and he became one of my life's heroes.