![]() “I wanted the product to be absolutely perfect before I distributed it, and it seemed to take so long for that to happen.”īut her wealth and influence came with setbacks. “During that time, I often became discouraged,” she told the magazine Texas Woman in 1979. “Our lab is working on a faster drying solution,” Graham wrote to one customer (the “lab” being her kitchen and her blender).Įvery evening she returned home from work to tinker with the formula, write letters to potential buyers and send samples. She moved forward anyway, poring over books in the public library to study formulas for tempera paint, and working with a chemistry teacher to improve the consistency of her product. Graham’s invention of correction fluid gave her a glimpse of a potential way out of her troubles, and she tried to form a business, calling it the Mistake Out Company, but could not afford the $400 patent fee. “She would often burst into tears of panic,” Michael Nesmith wrote in his autobiography, “Infinite Tuesday: An Autobiographical Riff” (2017). Graham - the name she took after a subsequent marriage - struggled to make ends meet, taking on side jobs like painting lettering on bank windows, designing letterheads and modeling furs. The marriage ended in divorce shortly after he returned, in 1946. The son, Michael Nesmith, would find fame as a member of the rock band the Monkees. When Nesmith went off to fight in World War II, Bette was pregnant with a boy. ![]() She left school at 17 to become a secretary and married her high school sweetheart, Warren Nesmith, two years later.
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