Naval Recruits
Watching Navy beat KSU 20-17 in the Liberty Bowl last week on a last second trick play brought back memories of recruiting former Naval officers back in the mid-70’s while working at Ford Motor Company. The midshipmen played that bowl game with such discipline and precision to gain their 11th victory of the season. That’s what allowed the trick play to work; Kansas State was not suspecting a pass in a tie game on 4th down and 3 on the 50 yard line since Navy runs the veer offense featuring a predominant running game.
But that exemplifies the exact reason we would recruit former Naval officers, graduate engineers from the Naval Academy, who had met their service obligations but decided against a career in the Navy. These candidates had the requisite technical and leadership skills to step right into key jobs at Ford and perform brilliantly. Their Naval Academy degree coupled with the shipboard experience as an officer perfectly prepared them for work at Ford Engineering.
Ford Motor Company's connection to the Naval academy started during WWII when Henry Ford II served as a Naval officer where he met and was impressed with many of the academy graduates. As the war was progressing in 1943; however, Ford's father Edsel died of cancer, so Henry Ford II was sent back home to run the company that was intimately involved with war production. Being only 26, Ford brought in a team of 10 of the best and brightest from the armed services, nicknamed the Whiz Kids.
This team of 10 executives shown in the first row of the above photo led Ford’s efforts after the war to restart vehicle production in the US and rebuild the bombed out Ford factories in Europe. The Whiz kids concurrently started the recruiting policy of hiring armed services officers into the company. I recall on a long flight to Europe in about 1980 sitting next to Whiz Kid Ed Lundy, who had been CFO of Ford before retiring in 1979. Henry Ford II had plucked him from the Army Air Force Statistical Team, so Ed was a real numbers guy for sure.
Ed couldn’t sleep on airplanes and neither could I, so he just kept telling story after story about the Whiz Kid days. If only I could just remember them, I’d have blog fodder for years! Seems it’s easy to recall things you personally lived through, but hard to remember events in other peoples lives.
Speaking of memories, I recall a Washington, DC recruiting trip to interview a number of potential Naval candidates over several days. The interviews were held at the historic Washington Naval Yard pictured above. The best candidates were invited to Ford Headquarters in Dearborn for additional interviews, but first had to have their references checked. Since most of the references were typically their Naval superior officers, we would stay over to talk to them personally about each recruit. The candidates had already indicated they would be leaving the Navy, so their officers were free and open to share their insight about the candidates. I recall talking to one reference who had just been assigned as Captain of the presidential yacht Sequoia docked on nearby Chesapeake Bay, so we met on board if you can believe that!
Being on the presidential yacht was a real thrill. And the Captain was very gracious and professional, highly recommending our selected candidate as an engineer for Ford. The candidate went on to have a stellar career at Ford, retiring a few years after I did. We see each other regularly at Ford retiree functions. Incidentally, the Sequoia is currently being restored in Maine as described in this article.
Ford still recruits from the military academies to this day, as the same principles still apply now as back then; talent and leadership are paramount to success. Check out this stirring tribute by Kiss’s Gene Simmons to all the military academies.
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