Zig Ziglar

Hilary Hinton "Zig" Ziglar (November 6, 1926 – November 28, 2012) was an American author, salesman, and motivational speaker.

Early life and education
"Zig" Ziglar was born in Coffee County in southeastern Alabama, to John Silas Ziglar and Lila Wescott Ziglar. He was the tenth of 12 children.

In 1931, when Ziglar was five years old, his father took a management position at a Mississippi farm, and his family moved to Yazoo City, Mississippi, where he spent most of his early childhood. The next year, his father died of a stroke, and his younger sister died two days later.

He was in the Navy V-12 Navy College Training Program and attended the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina.

Career
Ziglar later worked as a salesman in a succession of companies. In 1968, he became a vice president and training director for the Automotive Performance company and moved to Dallas, Texas.

In 2007, a fall down a flight of stairs left him with short-term memory problems. Nonetheless, by 2010, Ziglar still traveled around taking part in motivational seminars.

Personal life
Ziglar met his wife, Jean, in 1944, in Jackson, Mississippi. He was 17 and she was 16; they married in late 1946. They had four children: Suzan, Tom, Cindy, and Julie.

Ziglar, a Baptist, integrated Christianity into his motivational work. He was also a Republican who endorsed the former Governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee for his party's presidential nomination in 2008.

Death
On November 28, 2012, Ziglar died from pneumonia at a hospital in Plano, Texas.

Books

 * Pelican publisher Milburn E. Calhoun reported his greatest success with See You at the Top, which had been initially rejected by some 30 publishers.