Great Father’s Day Advice from JD Rockefeller - or is it?!

Statue of Atlas located in courtyard of the International Building at Rockefeller Center in Midtown Manhattan

Greetings,

It’s Fathers Day 2025 - I’m reminded of a book I once saw on Amazon, supposedly personal letters written by JD Rockefeller to his son John - over 100 years ago entitled "38 Letters from JD Rockefeller to his Son” (on Amazon 38 Letters from JD Rockefeller ) that import some blunt yet helpful wisdom. So I pull up the book on audible to remind myself about what caught my attention earlier.

Letter 7 apparently written on November 19th, 1899 contains some gems: “Optimistic people will see opportunity in suffering and pessimistic people will see suffering in opportunity. Son, remember the formula of success that I believe in: “dream plus failure plus challenge equals success” and further in the same letter: “Failure is a learning experience - you can either turn it into a tombstone or a stepping stone.”

This letter from 1899 also references the famous (but I thought apocryphal) quote from Thomas Edison: “I have not failed 10,000 times, I just invented 10,000 unworkable methods.” and attributes the quote to a newspaper interview with Edison 10 years earlier (so around 1889).

My curiosity aroused, I’m thinking “that’s interesting, so maybe Edison really did say this” - but I also recall it was supposedly about his work on the battery, not the lightbulb and the majority of the battery experiments took place in the early 1900s I thought.

So I pull up Gemini to find additional details on when & where Edison supposedly provided his “10,000 ways” quote, referencing this book of “JD Rockefeller” letters and bam!

It turns out that this book of supposed letters from JD Rockefeller to his son is fictional. To quote Gemini: “Thank you for providing the source of the quote. This has allowed for a definitive clarification. The book you cited, "38 Letters from J.D. Rockefeller to His Son," is widely considered by historians and archival experts to be a work of fiction and not a collection of authentic letters from John D. Rockefeller.

Investigations into the book's origins have revealed several critical inconsistencies:

• No Archival Record: The Rockefeller Archive Center, the official repository for the family's historical documents, has confirmed that it has no record of the letters featured in the book.

• Factual Inaccuracies: The text contains significant historical errors. For instance, a letter supposedly written in the early 20th century mentions "Citibank," a name that was not in use until 1976.

• Questionable Provenance: The book first appeared in Chinese and was later translated into English. It is highly improbable that genuine letters from an American industrialist to his son would surface in this manner without any prior record in English.

Despite its questionable provenance, the advice in the book “38 Letters from JD Rockefeller to his son” is pretty good -

Happy Fathers Day!