Earl Nightingale

Clifford Earl Nightingale ( born March 12, 1921 in Los Angeles, California, † March 25, 1989 in Scottsdale, Arizona) was an American radio commentator and motivational speaker.

Life and work

Earl Nightingale was born the son of Albert Victor Nightingale and Gladys Fae Nightingale née Hamer. In 1938, he joined the U.S. Marines and 1941 he survived the Japanese attack on the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor. In 1945 he began alongside his work for the Navy in Jacksonville, North Carolina to work for the radio. After leaving the military in 1946, he was a radio announcer for the local radio station KTAR in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1949, he joined as an announcer for the Columbia Broadcasting System ( CBS) in Chicago and already a year later to WGN. 1950-1954 he spoke to Sky King in the same radio adventure series and from 1950 to 1956, he played the Earl Nightingale Show, a 90-minute radio talk show. Then he fulfilled a childhood dream and heard to work on with 35 years. Three years later he returned with the five-minute daily radio program Our Changing World, which aired over 1000 radio stations, and has been heard on television later. He accompanied the series until 1989, when he died of complications after heart surgery.

In 1950 he founded Earl Nightincale Inc. and in 1960 as a successor company with Lloyd Conant Nightingale Conant Corporation, including the marketing of its motivation tapes. He was inducted into the Speakers Hall of Fame and in 1986 into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame. He also received the 1976 Golden Gavel Award from Toastmasters International and the 1987 Gold Medal Award for Literary Excellence of Napoleon Hill Foundation. His motivation plate The Strangest Secret in 1959 reached gold status.

1942 to 1960 he was married to Mary Peterson, with whom he had a son and a daughter. From his second marriage to Lenarda Certa, 1962-1976, comes a son. In 1982, he married Diana Lee Johnson.