An entrepreneur and a gentleman
From the December 2015 issue of The Rotarian
On a clear spring day at the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, the sky is azure, cherry blossoms and lilacs are exploding across the green landscape, and the majestic Doric columns of Angell Hall glow golden in the sunlight. This is the place that gave serial entrepreneur John W. Barfield his start.
But Barfield, 88, is not an alumnus. He didn’t have the opportunity to go to college, or even to finish high school. He grew up in a family of sharecroppers in the segregated South. In search of a better life, his family migrated north to…
