The Company That Was Born After Everything Fell Apart A true story about loss, responsibility, and the decision to build something that mattered.

Friday, July 31, 1981
Idaho Press-Tribune
Nampa, Idaho

Two Nampa Brothers Die in Accident

Two rural Nampa, Idaho brothers suffocated Thursday evening when they climbed into a truckload of barley and were sucked underneath the grain.

Jeff and John Itami, ages eleven and twelve, were the beloved sons of Dennis and Kay Itami, prominent farmers and citizens of Nampa, a close-knit community in southwest Idaho.

Canyon County Chief Coroner Chris Klein said the accident occurred at approximately 7:00 p.m., while a truckload of barley was being unloaded at the A-Bar-D Cattle Company feedlot south of Nampa.

As authorities reconstructed the moments leading up to the tragedy, they determined the boys probably had climbed onto the truck bed where they were throwing grasshoppers into a trailer load of barley grain and watching the vacuum effect as the rapidly disappearing grain sucked the insects into the chute.

Apparently, one of the boys fell in and the other jumped in to save him. They were both drawn into the grain as it poured at blinding speed from the V-shaped bed of the truck through a trapdoor in the floor.

Despite the efforts of paramedics on the scene to revive them, the boys never regained consciousness.

What makes this story more than just another tragedy is the prominence of the family and their standing in the community.

The boys attended Nampa Christian Schools, where their father served as chairman of the board. The Itami family was well-liked and highly regarded for their farming ability.

Dennis Itami had been named Idaho Farmer of the Year twice, a rare honor.

After the death of their two boys, the Itamis’ enthusiasm for farming quietly faded. Dennis found himself working the soil out of habit rather than passion.

His heart was no longer in the land.

So when a new business opportunity appeared, he was more open than he would have been before.

One belief Dennis carried from his earliest years never left him: faith in free enterprise. He believed it was the ultimate level playing field for the individual willing to work.

Up to that point, Dennis had always worked for himself. Even in high school, he farmed eighty acres on his own. He never visited a guidance counselor. He already knew where he belonged.

He never filled out a job application. Never punched a time clock. Never had taxes withheld from a paycheck.

A rugged individualist, Dennis Itami marched to his own drummer.

Introduced to Green Barley Grass

“One day, a friend of mine, Jim Kling, brought me a jar of a strange-looking green substance called BarleyLife. I’d never seen anything like it,” Dennis recalled.

“Jim said it was being sold by a health-food store in Salt Lake City, where some guy was trying to start a marketing company out of his shop.”

“I thought it sounded crazy.”

Dennis bought a few jars anyway. Not because he believed in it — but because Jim and his wife Carolyn were friends.

Dennis had always been healthy. Nutrition wasn’t on his radar. He joked that whenever his truck passed McDonald’s golden arches, the steering wheel turned into the parking lot on its own.

“I truly didn’t believe BarleyLife would work,” he said. “As far as I was concerned, it was just another jar of snake oil — only powdered.”

Still, he decided to test it.

He gave the first jar to his father, who suffered from advanced spinal arthritis after being run over by a tractor years earlier.

Weeks later, Dennis’s mother noticed something unusual.

“Dennis,” she said, “your father is fishing again. He’s bowling. He’s acting normal.”

Dennis dismissed it. “Mind over matter,” he thought.

So he ran a second experiment.

He gave BarleyLife to the family dog.

“She was old, stiff, and barely moving,” Dennis said. “We’d even talked about putting her down.”

Within weeks, the dog was running the farm again.

“That’s when I knew it couldn’t be psychological.”

That moment changed everything.

Within six months, Dennis and Kay sold their farming partnership and committed fully to this new venture — not as nutrition experts, but as people who had seen undeniable results.

“Looking back,” Dennis said, “we believe the Lord was in that decision from the beginning.”

“We realized we had been taken out of the field for a reason — to help people reclaim their health, their hope, and their lives.”

Ron Wright and Dennis Itami Partner

Ron Wright remembers an autumn morning in 1982 in Emmett, Idaho. The sky hung low with clouds. The town of five thousand was waking up to another ordinary day.

Ron had once lived that life too.

A successful real estate developer, he had built his career from the ground up. But at forty-seven, recurring heart trouble forced him into early retirement.

His father had died of a heart attack. Ron was not shocked. These things, he believed, ran in families.

But Ron was fortunate.

The same man who had introduced Dennis Itami to BarleyLife, Jim Kling, also mentioned it to Ron.

Ron was not skeptical. He did not experiment on relatives or pets. He simply tried it himself.

Within one month, his chest pain disappeared.

Years later, Ron found himself a co-owner of The AIM Companies.

“More than twenty years ago, I watched nutritional products relieve the pressure of a tumor on my mother’s brain,” Ron said.

“Doctors sent her home to die. I gave her a special aloe tonic every day for weeks. She lived.”

That experience stayed with him.

“It opened my mind,” Ron said. “I had never read a nutrition magazine in my life. I was a builder. That was my world.”

When his own heart began to fail, he paid attention.

“After one month on BarleyLife, the pain vanished.”

Ron shared the product with friends.

A retired U.S. marshal who had endured three bypass surgeries regained the ability to walk, travel, and live again.

A retired teacher and football coach, humiliated by years of chronic diarrhea, recovered within weeks.

Ron could not stay silent.

“I kept checking the stories,” he said. “They were real.”

Then came bad news.

Financial reversals threatened to shut the company down.

Ron refused to let it fail.

He visited Dennis late at night, when the lights were still on. Dennis and Kay were handling everything themselves.

One night, Dennis looked up from his numbers.

“Ron,” he said, “why don’t you just buy me out?”

Ron knew better.

The product worked. The people were right. The problem was temporary.

Ron risked half his financial worth to stabilize the company.

“I wrote the check in minutes,” he said. “It took a lifetime to earn.”

The gamble paid off.

Decades later, The AIM Companies continued to grow.

“We are just getting started,” Ron said.

“Everything we experienced prepared us to help someone else.”

A brief interview with Dennis and Kay Itami, sharing the AIM story in their own words.