Zig Ziglar - Biography

Biography

Zig Ziglar was born in Coffee County, Alabama to parents John Silas Ziglar and Lila Wescott Ziglar. He was the tenth of twelve 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. In 1932, his father died of a stroke, and his younger sister died two days later.

Ziglar served in the United States Navy during World War II (circa 1943 to 1945). He was in the Navy V-12 Navy College Training Program, attending the University of South Carolina.

In 1944 he met his wife, Jean, in Jackson, Mississippi; he was seventeen and she was sixteen. They married in late 1946.

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, moving to Dallas, Texas.

As of 2010, Ziglar still traveled around taking part in motivational seminars, despite a fall down a flight of stairs in 2007 that left him with short-term memory problems. Maine State Representative Chris Greeley mentioned Zig in the credits of his CD on public speaking.