Fred Smith

After one firefight, Rexroad remembered Smith returning in tears.

The sergeant had just been killed.

And that loss hit Fred hard, very hard.

When Smith's first tour ended in 1968, America was falling apart.

Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assassinated.

It would have been easy to stay home.

Smith decided to return for a second tour.

When asked why, by a local newspaper reporter, Smith replied, There are 500,000 Americans over there, and I've had a year's experience, and I know I can do it better than any new officer they might send over to replace me.

Smith returned home on July 21, 1969, the same day that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.

He was 25, carrying medals, shrapnel still in his back, and a complete operating philosophy.

Take care of your people and they'll accomplish the impossible.

I wanted to do something productive after blowing up so many things, he said.

The lesson he took away from his time is that loyalty is earned through shared sacrifice, not money.

Years later, when FedEx nearly died, employees would work without pay to save it.

They'd use personal credit cards to fuel planes, not because they had to, but because Fred Smith had learned from Sergeant Jack how to earn that kind of loyalty.

Fred Smith had transformed himself again.

Each transformation taught him that impossible was just another word for opportunity.

Now he was ready to build a company that would transform how the world moved.

But first...

He'd have to convince everyone that overnight delivery wasn't a fantasy.