Vesta Stoudt was working as a factory worker during World War Two packing ammunition boxes. She knew that there was a problem.
The ammunition boxes
were difficult to open. Now in a firefight, you don’t want to struggle to open
the box, but you also don’t want a box that lets live ammo spill out in
transport.
So she came up with a
solution. She told her bosses. They shot her down without much consideration. She
tried again. No result. So, she took it up the chain of command. Way, way up
the chain of command.
On February 10, 1943,
she wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt explaining the problem
and offering a solution. Luckily for us he listened.
Because her idea didn’t
just help win the war, it became one of the most useful things in the world.
Her idea was a strong cloth tape with an adhesive to close the seams. The idea
would become duct tape, quite possibly the most useful ‘fix it all’ in the
world.
Proverbs 19:20 says,
“Listen to counsel and accept discipline, That you may be wise the rest of
your days”. When you stop listening
you stop getting better. I don’t know
why Vesta's bosses didn’t listen to her. But they missed out because they did. We need
to not make the same mistake.
It never hurts to
listen and consider ideas. You never know what may come out of them!
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