James Lowrance

A husband, father and grandfather, I’ve been a contract salesman most of my life. During the early 1990s, I marketed an outdoors product I invented with my co-inventor being Johnny W. Hall. I formed a small corporation in Oklahoma, with permission from my Texan co-inventor, to patent, manufacture and sell a fishing tackle accessory, called the "Rod Floater" (now a registered Trademark via the product's new owner). When our own corporation still owned the product, I traveled the U.S. making presentations to groups of Wal-Mart zone and district managers and received authorization to sell the product in two regions of Wal-Mart stores for five years. I also sold the product to Bass Pro Shops, Cabela's and Academy Stores, all of which still carry the product and I landed a national promotion for the product with Kerr-McGee Oil company who began using the product to promote their outboard motor oil in 1992. In 1996 I licensed the product to TTI-Blakemore, a major fishing tackle conglomerate, from which I was paid royalties from sales of the product from 1996, and ending in 2016. I invented and marketed five additional outdoors products, also getting these into Wal-Mart stores and afterward sold them outright rather than licensing them. I learned a great deal about invention marketing during those years and was privileged to meet the CEOs of many well-known companies. I was also invited for television and radio appearances and met with the T.V. hosts of many fishing shows and was featured in the May 2001 issue of Inventors digest magazine. I received a diploma from Liberty University for completion of theological studies in 1996. I served as a youth minister, Bible teacher and guest speaker in fundamental, evangelical Christian churches, from 1983 to 2001. In 2003 I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism; "Hashimoto's thyroiditis" being the cause. This autoimmune form of thyroid disease that causes destruction of the thyroid gland resulted in my also developing "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome", due to a compromised immune system with severe co-morbid "Adrenal Fatigue". I also suffered severe anxiety symptoms, including panic attacks early into the onset of Hashimoto's thyroiditis (Hashitoxicosis). A common heart murmur I was diagnosed with in my teens called "Mitral Valve Prolapse", also worsened in severity of symptoms, with the development of these other health disorders. My eventual receiving of a diagnosis was a difficult process with proper diagnostic testing not being ordered by the first doctors I sought treatment from. These types of issues were inspiration for me to become proactive in my own health care and to self-educate myself on these health disorders, which I have done extensively since 2003. I now enjoy sharing this information with other patients experiencing my same health disorders.