Nashville’s Hall of Fame Showcases Graduate Success Stories
“He had only three pennies in his pocket!”
This is how the story of the Nashville campus of Lincoln College of Technology begins, and they are the opening words of the introduction to the annual Nashville Hall of Fame brochure. School founder H.O. Balls is said to have had just three pennies in his pocket when he set out for Nashville, TN. “It is a story of three pennies and individual courage,” the introduction continues. “It is a true story of a great person.”
Nashville Auto-Diesel College was founded in 1919; in 2012 the school became Lincoln College of Technology in Nashville, but along the way a campus Hall of Fame was born. In 1986, H.O.’s son Thomas – NADC’s CEO at the time – saw a newspaper article about an NADC graduate who became a successful truck stop owner in Florida.
More than that, the graduate – Mr. Miguel Haddad – had escaped to America from Cuba, risking his life in search of better opportunities and a better future. Mr. Haddad’s story inspired Thomas Balls, and the following year the campus inducted its first 13 members into the Hall of Fame.
“Not a single one of this class came from wealth,” the brochure says. “All were ‘three penny’ young men of unusual courage. All were great individuals.”
Twenty-eight years after the story of Miguel Haddad inspired the birth of a Nashville campus Hall of Fame – and 95 years after a visionary with three pennies in his pocket set out to establish a landmark training institution – there are now nearly 90 members, including several distinguished instructors.
You can read the success stories of Hall of Fame members such as Tommy Curtis, Brian Gott, Leon Kaplan and Nick Bolick at the Nashville 95th Anniversary blog – many more stories will be told in the weeks ahead! Follow the blog to learn more about the incredible success stories being written every day on our Nashville campus!
Return back to the Nashville 95th Anniversary home page.