This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star

and the American people.

And by the way, we'd love to hear your stories. Send them to Our American Stories.com.

There's some of our favorites.

Bill Rhodes, a Memphis, Tennessee native, has been the president and CEO of AutoZone since 2005.

Today, Bill joins us to tell his life story

and the journey that led him to AutoZone.

So my father in the early years

was with Orkin pest control,

and my mother and father moved nine times in 10 years.

And one of the stops was Greenville, which is where I was born.

After I was six weeks old, we moved to Meridian, Mississippi.

And after about another year, we moved to Dallas, Texas.

In 1969, April of 1969, our family moved from Dallas, Texas to Memphis, Tennessee. The reason we moved to Memphis, Tennessee was my mother and father didn't want to keep moving

every year.

He was a branch manager with working, and so they kept moving year after year after year. He was a branch manager with Orkin, and so they kept moving year after year after a year.

There was a new startup company in Memphis, Tennessee called Terminex at the time.

Terminax had just a handful of branches, and they hired my father to be the first ever multi-store manager. So he came to Memphis in

April, 1969, as the regional manager for Terminix, the only one that they had. And I lost him

a couple of years ago, so I can't hardly talk about him without getting a little choked up. But

...