Perseverance

Just finished reading the 3rd Edition of "Chicken Soup for the Soul" . Found some really good inspiring stories in there . Here is one on Thomas Alva Edison :

On the night of December 9, 1914, the great Thomas Alva Edison Industries of West Orange, New Jersey, is destroyed by fire. Thomas Edison loses $2,000,000 that night and much of his life's work goes up in flames. He is insured, but only for $230,000 because the buildings has been made of concrete and at that time it is thought to be fire-proof.

Edison's son, who was twenty-four at the time, finds his sixty-seven year old father that night standing near the fire, his face ruddy in the glow, his white hair blown by the December winds. "My heart ached for him," remembered Charles Edison. "He was no longer a young man-and everything was going up in flames." But the next morning in the silence of the charred remains, while poking through the embers of his hopes and dreams, Thomas Edison says to his wife and son: "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew."

Three short weeks after the fire, Thomas Alva Edison delivers to the world the first phonograph.