1964 New York World’s Fair
Mama and Daddy decided the 1964 New York World’s Fair would be an excellent educational opportunity for Dear Sister and me, so that is where we went for vacation. Of course, being a Ford man, Daddy was mostly looking forward to “Ford’s Magic Skyway;” Ford had introduced the Mustang on April 17 at their exhibit, which just increased the excitement. Unfortunately, it was one of the most popular exhibits at the fair, so the line was extremely long. After some discussion, we as a family decided it would be better to visit several exhibits rather than spend our entire day waiting in line at the Ford exhibit. One of our favorites was the General Electric “Carousel of Progress,” which was later moved to Disney World where Amanda and Alyssa were able to ride it. I recall watching the gigantic US Royal tire-shaped Ferris Wheel in the distance while we ate lunch.
That afternoon, we went to the Chrysler Exhibit where we saw a short movie about some Chrysler engineer. It was presented as an actual biography; I didn’t realize that it started with a fictionalized version of his childhood, obsessed with designing cars from the time he could crawl. It struck me that he had decided what he wanted to do with his life as a toddler; here I was, already eight years old, and I had never even considered what I wanted to be when I grew up. Designing cars looked like fun, so I decided I would be an engineer, not at Chrysler, of course, but at Ford. To do that, I needed an engineering degree; a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech would be perfect! Everyone in the family that cared about such things was a Georgia Tech fan (Mama, her parents, and Daddy’s mother); meanwhile, the only sport that interested Daddy was auto racing and he, as has been previously stated, was a Ford man. It was perfect! But, when I excitedly told my parents, they responded with the 1964 equivalent of, “Yeah, right.” However, I had established my life’s goals — to get a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech and to become an engineer at Ford.
Georgia Tech
Although I had decided on Georgia Tech when I was eight, the first time I visited the campus was during my junior year in high school. One of my friends, Tommy Wilson, also wanted to attend Tech; they were having an open house of sorts for high school juniors on a Saturday that spring and his mother took Tommy and me.
Tommy and I both applied to Tech the next year; we were both accepted. The freshman orientation for mechanical engineering students was the last session that summer, immediately prior to registration and the start of classes. So, one day I packed my car and drove to Atlanta for orientation; it was the second time I had ever been on campus. During one of our sessions at the Alexander Memorial Colosseum, we were instructed to look to the person on our right, then look to the person on our left; that only two of the three of us would graduate from Georgia Tech. In my case, it was Tommy who didn’t graduate; he dropped out after the first quarter, transferred to Mercer, got a law degree, became a lawyer, and, at the time I’m writing this, is a judge.
But everything went swimmingly well for me (or not; I need to write about Drownproofing, which went the opposite of “swimmingly well,” but that’s another story for another day), and I found myself in Winter Quarter, 1978, only a few short months from graduation.
The Georgia Tech Placement Center prided itself in that almost all graduating seniors had accepted a job offer or had been accepted into graduate school by graduation. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at interviewing — it’s still one of my weaknesses — so I wasn’t very successful in my first interview attempts.
The Great Blizzard of 1978
I got my first off campus interview to the Torrington Company in Torrington, Connecticut in early February 1978. They made roller bearings, and I was interviewing for an application engineering position. I would work with their customers to identify the best roller bearing for their application, considering such things as shaft speed, axial and transverse loads, available space, and environmental conditions — high and low temperatures, exposure to water, salt, dirt, and so forth. If that sounds boring to you, it did to me, too; that wasn’t what I wanted to do, but it was a job, so I took the interview seriously. Plus, I had never flown before and had never been to Connecticut, so it promised to be quite an adventure.
My maternal grandmother, “Mama Pierson,” loved to travel and loved to fly, although she had only made one round trip by air, to Seattle, Washington, to visit her older son, my Uncle Jimmy, when he was in the Air Force. (Ironically, she only made one other round trip by air, to Uncle Jimmy's funeral in Texas in January 1985.) In the 70s, before the advent of metal detectors and other airport security measures, it was common for commercial aircraft to be hijacked to Cuba. The crew and passengers were rarely harmed, and the Cuban government invariably allowed the plane, crew, and passengers to leave within a day or two, so it was mostly an inconvenience, not a real danger. Mama Pierson thought it would be the adventure of a lifetime, so, while everyone else was hoping I’d have an enjoyable but uneventful round trip to Connecticut, she was hoping I’d get hijacked to Cuba. So much for being her favorite grandchild….
I got out of my last class late Friday morning, February 3, and headed to my dorm room, planning to pack and go home for the weekend. It was a nice, warm day for early February, and I was looking forward to relaxing after a week of school and work. Then, it occurred to me that I could — should — drop my resume off at the Georgia Tech Placement Center. My interview with Ford was the following Wednesday and Friday was the earliest that they would accept a resume for a Wednesday interview. On the other hand, I would be back in Atlanta Monday night, so I could drop it off Tuesday after class. While it was tempting to go home, I decided to take the resume to the Placement Center first.
I flew to Hartford, Connecticut, on Sunday, February 5; fortunately, I didn’t get hijacked to Cuba. I interviewed at Torrington the next day and was supposed to return to Atlanta that evening. However, it began snowing in the morning and had become a full blizzard by afternoon. All flights out of Hartford were cancelled, so my host got me a room in a local hotel. I called and let Joey, my roommate, know that I wouldn't be returning that night. I had been snowed in by the Blizzard of ‘78 (see the Wikipedia article on the Northeastern United States blizzard of 1978).
The transportation situation didn’t improve on Tuesday; I tried to find some way to get to an airport that was still operating, but the roads were impassible, and the trains were inoperable. I called the grocery store where I worked that afternoon to tell the head cashier that I wouldn’t be able to come to work the next day. Then, heartbroken, I contacted the Georgia Tech Placement Center to cancel my interview with Ford. None of my friends or acquaintances had gotten an offer to interview off campus without an on-campus interview, so I was resigned to seeing my dream of working for Ford disappear.
I was on the first flight back to Atlanta when the Hartford airport opened on Thursday afternoon and was back in school and at work the next day.
I got an offer from Torrington, but I wasn't really interested in being a roller bearing application engineer. And I had several other interviews with refineries and a chemical plant, but those didn’t really interest me, either. Perhaps I should stay at Georgia Tech another year, get my Masters, and get another chance to interview with Ford….
An Unexpected Letter
One Saturday morning in mid-April, I decided to stop by my Georgia Tech post office box on my way to the grocery store, where I was scheduled for a lovely 8-hour shift as a cashier. I don’t really know why I checked my mail; I certainly wasn’t expecting anything, but I’ve always liked to get the mail, so I stopped by the post office.
And I was shocked; I had received a letter from the Ford Motor Company. I quickly opened it; it said to call at my earliest convenience to arrange an interview with Truck and Recreational Products Operations — which turned out to be their name for the Medium and Heavy Truck Division. I was on Cloud 9 at work that day; my dream of being a Ford engineer might come true after all!
I called after class on Monday and arranged the interview for the next week. I would fly up Sunday, interview Monday, and return to Atlanta Monday night.
Interview with Ford
On the taxi ride from the Detroit airport, I saw the gigantic US Royal “tire” from the 1964 New York World’s Fair; no longer a Ferris wheel, but now a traditional Detroit landmark. I stayed at the Dearborn Inn, across from Ford’s Dearborn Proving Grounds, which was previously the Dearborn airport. Henry Ford had the Dearborn Inn built as the world’s first airport hotel, so I was immersed in Ford history and tradition from the start.
The next morning, I met my host, an engineer who had been at Ford for about a year. He gave me a tour of the facility; I had interviews with several of the managers. My host and I had lunch with the Chief Engineer; it turns out that he was a Georgia Tech grad; he had led the recruiting visit to Tech, seen my resume, been impressed, and decided to offer me an interview sight unseen.
And while I'm not very good at interviewing, this was different. Henry Ford was Daddy’s hero; I knew all about Ford history and tradition. And Daddy and his brother, my Uncle Ronald, had trucks; I had been raised surrounded by medium and heavy trucks, so I “spoke the language." It was perfectly obvious that I had the job. The last interview was at the personnel office; I was asked how much my classmates and I were being offered; I gave a range; a few days later I received an offer $16 a year less that the top of that range. No, I didn’t call and accept that day — it was too late. I accepted first thing the following morning.
End of One Phase, Beginning of Another
I graduated from Georgia Tech on June 10, 1978, my parents’ 23rd wedding anniversary. My parents helped me move to Michigan the next week; while Mama and I were working on my new apartment, Daddy attended Ford’s 75th anniversary celebration on June 16. On June 20, I officially became an engineer at Ford Motor Company and, thereby, accomplished my life’s goals at 22 years, two months old. Everything else, as they say, has been icing on the cake.
Postlude
Sometime later, Daddy told me that I had always said I was going to get a mechanical engineering degree from Georgia Tech so I could be an engineer at Ford; he wanted to know how I knew that, how I knew what to do. I told him about the revelation at the Chrysler exhibit; it just occurred to me what I wanted to do and how to do it. And, while I had always known that Daddy had attended the University of Miami (Florida) for a year before dropping out, it wasn’t until many years later that he told me what his major had been — mechanical engineering.