The creator of the beloved educational electronic toy company LeapFrog has died by way of physician-assisted suicide, according to a report.
Mike Wood, 72, decided to end his life on April 10 after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and did not want the disease to progress further, his brother told The New York Times.
A doctor with the nonprofit organization Dignitas in Switzerland performed the procedure as the entrepreneur was surrounded by his family in Zürich — a city located about 80 miles from the capital of Bern.
“We are saddened by the loss of LeapFrog founder, Mike Wood. He was an innovative leader whose passion to find a new way to help his child learn led to something remarkable,” LeapFrog Enterprises wrote in a statement on Instagram.
“His passion was transformed into a company that has helped millions of children learn to read, and so much more. We loved working with Mike and are honored to continue what he started.“
Under Swiss law, assisted suicide is only considered a crime if the motive is selfish — meaning it can’t be performed for scenarios like financial gain through inheritance. Assisting someone to kill themselves unlawfully can be punishable by up to five years in jail.
Wood, a California native, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University in 1974 and later received a law degree from the University of California Law San Francisco — Hastings College of the Law — and worked as an attorney for several years.
However, when he became a father, his 3-year-old son, Mat, struggled with reading and pronouncing the sounds of letters, according to The New York Times.
The young father, worried his struggles with reading would continue as he got older, began working on an innovative prototype that would later become a best-selling toy across the US.
Basing his invention on Musical greeting cards, Wood created LeapFrog — an electronic toy that pronounced the sounds of plastic letters when a child interacted with it.
With the help of engineers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and an education professor at Stanford, he founded LeapFrog Enterprises in 1995 and began manufacturing the Phonics Desk to help connect letters and sounds for young children.
In 1997, Oracle founder Larry Ellison and investor Michael R. Milken were so impressed by LeapFrog that they bought the majority stake through their American educational services company, Knowledge Universe.
Knowledge Universe brought in millions, allowing Wood’s company to invent new educational toys.
With the influx of cash flow, Wood acquired a company to develop the LeapFrog — an easy-to-use computer that resembled a book, with early touch screen technology, with interactive pages that, when pressed, would spell or sound out words for children within the storybooks that could be inserted inside.
Wood also insisted that the toy be sold for no more than $49 across the US, LeapFrog’s former president of the SchoolHouse Division, Bob Lally, wrote in a piece honoring Wood’s legacy.
“His vision of how this technology and his relentless drive to get the retail cost below $50 was the key to LeapFrog’s success as the LeapPad launched the following year to amazing success,” Lally wrote.
The LeapFrog became the best-selling toy of the 2000 holiday season, which propelled the company into creating other educational toys, including devices that helped with math and geography.
In 2001, LeapFrog products were in nine million homes and thousands of schools. By 2008, more than 30 million LeapPads and related products had been sold globally, according to The New York Times.
Leapfrog’s former executive director of entertainment, Chris D’Angelo, wrote that Wood was “demanding, but he brought out the best in us.”
“I can still hear him say, “This is an A. How can we make it an A+?” We’d all grumble and go back to the drawing board—but always returned with something better,” D’Angelo wrote.
“He taught me that extra effort is worth it when you’re chasing a huge vision. He helped shape who I am as a creator, a leader, and a person.”
Wood stepped down from his company in 2004 but “continued his commitment to early childhood education by founding yet another company, SmartyAnts,” Lally wrote.
He also spent years as a volunteer 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 running a major company brought with it.
“In 2003, we had 1,000 employees, $650 million in revenue, $60 million in earnings, and I had a headache every day. There would be four or five problems on my desk every day that had no good answer — you had to pick the least worst answer.”
Wood is survived by his wife and high school sweetheart, Leslie Harlander, his brothers, Tim and Denis, his son, Mat, and three grandchildren.
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