Michael Nesmith aunts, and grandmother. Bette took temporary jobs ranging from clerical work to graphical design and developed very good secretarial skills, including shorthand and, auspiciously, touch typing. When Nesmith was 13, his mother invented the typewriter correction fluid later known commercially as Liquid Paper. Over the next 25 years she built the Liquid Paper Corporation into a multimillion-dollar international company, which she finally sold to Gillette in 1979 for US$48 million. She died a few months later, aged 56. Nesmith was enrolled in the Dallas public school system in 1949, aged 6. Describing himself as an indifferent student, he nevertheless participated
Michael Nesmith in choral and drama activities during his years at Thomas Jefferson High School in Dallas. He also began to write verse poetry. When he was 15 he enrolled in the Dallas Theater Center teen program, where he was featured in several plays. Without graduating from high school, Nesmith enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1960. He completed basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, was trained as an aircraft mechanic at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, and then was permanently stationed at the Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base near Burns Flat, Oklahoma. While