Role and Company
Founder, Starving Students
Expertise
48 years experience in management
Location
Los Angeles, CA
About Ethan
I have created over 150,000 jobs.
BA, Philosophy, UCLA
JD, Loyola University School of Law
Member of YPO
I founded my company when I was 17 years old. At peak we were the largest local mover in the country with over 70 locations nationwide, 1,000+ people employed, and we operated 100's of trucks. The company often provided unskilled workers with skills enabling them to gain well-paying positions. Numerous innovations in the early years set new industry standards for customer service, employee satisfaction, and safety and regulatory compliance. Over 45 years the company created well in excess over 150,000 jobs and moved millions of people.
My father joined the Marines in 1939 at the age 13. He was in the Army at 15 and Navy at 16.
In the Navy he was stationed in England. His ship was part of a flotilla heading to the invasion of Normandy, where he was a signalman. He was in the crow's nest when the ships were attacked by enemy submarines and planes. Many of the ships were sunk and most of the sailors froze to death in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. By accident he was left in the crow's nest for a lengthy period and he was revived from a near death experience.
He then participated in operation Tiger, an ersatz invasion to divert the Germans prior to Normandy. In the invasion of Normandy he drove a boat transporting soldiers from ship to shore. When he opened the front of the boat for disembarkment the boat sunk . The men were ordered to go out the front of the boat but everyone was getting killed in machine gun fire, so many violated orders and jumped over the side. Many of the men had eaten a large pre-invasion breakfast and were sea sick. They were wearing a new type of life jacket that they were not trained on and many were strangled to death because they misused it. My father said he only lived because he was fast and didn't eat much- he didn't like the food and essentially lived on coffee, chocolate and cigarettes. From the Beach he caught a ride back to his ship and had 3 Nazi prisoners. Once out to sea the prisoners were offered a choice of being shot or jumping in the ocean; they all jumped in all froze to death.
After WWII he initially worked in underground paramilitary government roles where he collected and distributed weapons internationally. Subsequently he traveled the world as an Able Bodied Seaman on a commercial ship. He was questioned by SIS/M16 while traveling in Europe about his military role.
Later my father worked as a television writer and author. My father believed in a strong national defense, He had strong moral character and as a child he told me every day to be ethical and honest. He retired young and spent his time reading. He had expertise in history (he knew the entire history of the world), military history, geography (he could draw a map of the world from memory), literature, language (he challenged me often to name an English word and he would translate it into ancient languages), and so forth. One of his interesting written works was about the colorful language of the lower economic classes of southerners drafted into the service for WWII, published in Maledicta, an academic journal of bad language.
I am honored to be able to participate in this service.