The creator of the dear company of educational toys Leapfrog has died for suicide assisted by a doctor, according to a report.
Mike Wood, 72, decided to finish his life on April 10 after Alzheimer’s diagnosed and did not do it because the disease progressed even more, his brother told New York Times.
A doctor from the non -profit organization Dignitas in Switzerland carried out the procedure since the businessman was surrounded by his family in Zurich, a city located about 80 miles from the capital of Bern.
“We are saddened by the loss of the founder of Leapfrog, Mike Wood. He was an innovative leader whose passion for finding a new way of helping his son to learn led to something remarkable,” Leapfrog Enterprises in a statement on Instagram.
“His passion became a company that has helped millions of children learn to read, and much more. We loved working with Mike and we are honored to continue what began.”
According to the Swiss Law, assisted suicide is just a crime if the reason is selfish, which means that it cannot be carried out for scenarios such as financial gain through inheritance. Helping someone suicide can be punished up to five years in jail.
Wood, a native of California, graduated with a degree at Stanford University in 1974 and then received a law degree of the Law of the University of California San Francisco – Hastings College of the Law – and worked in a lawyer for several years.
However, when he became a father, his 3 -year -old son, Matt, fought to read and pronounce the sounds of the letters, according to the New York Times.
The young father, worried that his struggles with reading continue as he aged, began working in an innovative prototype that would later become a best -selling toy in the United States.
Based on his invention on musical greeting cards, Wood created Leapfrog, an electronic toy that pronounced the sounds of plastic letters when a child interacted with him.
With the help of the engineers at Lawrence Liermore National Laboratory and an education teacher at Stanford, the founded Leapfrog Enterprises in 1995 and begged the manufacture of the Phonics desktop to help connect letters and sounds for young children.
In 1997, the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison and the investor Michael R. Milken, were so impressed by Leapfrog that they bought the majority participation through their American educational company, Knowledge Universe.
The knowledge universe brought millions, which allows Wood’s company to invent new educational toys.
With the influx of cash flow, Wood acquired a company to develop the computer for easy jumping that looked like a book, with early touch screen technology, with interactive pages that, when pressed, came out words for children inserted inside.
Wood also insisted that the toy be sold for no more than $ 49 in the United States, the former president of the Division of the Leapfrog School, Bob Lally, wrote to a piece honoring Wood’s legacy.
“His vision of how this technology and its implacable impulse to obtain the retail cost below $ 50 was the key to the success of Leapfrog when the Leapad launched the following year for surprising success,” Lally wrote.
The jump became the best -selling toy of the 2000 holiday season, which promoted the company to create other educational toys, including devices that helped with mathematics and geography.
In 2001, Leapfrog products were in nine million homes and thousands of schools. For 2008, more than 30 million Leappads and products related worldwide had been sold, according to the New York Times.
The former executive director of Entertainment of Leapfrog, Chris D’Angelo, wrote that Wood was “demanding, but brought the best out of us.”
“I can still hear it say:” This is an A. How can we do it a+? “We all complain and return to the drawing board, but we always return with something better,” D’Angelo wrote.
“Hey, he taught me that the extra effort is worth it when you are chasing a great vision. He helped shape who I am as a creator, leader and person.”
Wood resigned from his company in 2004 but “continued his commitment to early childhood education by founding another company, smartyants,” Lally wrote.
He also spent years as a voluntary reading teacher at a school near his home in California.
Wood told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that he retired due to the stress directed by a large company brought with him.
“In 2003, we had 1,000 employees, $ 650 million in revenues, $ 60 million in profits, and had a headache every day. There would be four or five problems on my desk every day that did not have a good response.”
Wood survives his wife and high school girlfriend, Leslie Harlander, his brothers, Tim and Denis, his son, Mat and three grandchildren.