Born in Childress, Texas, Lou Dobbs was raised in Idaho, in a family that believed that reading and keeping up with current events was essential. By age nine he was working in potato fields, picking potatoes, by age eleven he was lifting 100-pound sacks on trucks. Pooling his money with several friends to buy a truck, they formed a hay-hauling business, earning 5 cents a bale, a job he worked every summer from the time he was 16 until he completed college. He entered Harvard on scholarship, majoring in economics, and after graduation landed a job in Los Angeles with Union Bank. Over the next two years he began talking about becoming a reporter, handed in his notice and took his first news job in Yuma, Arizona working as a police and fire reporter for $75 a week, an 80 percent pay cut from his days at the bank.
Lou Dobbs passed away at the age of 78.
