Despite his education, imagination and drive, my father was denied employment equal to his qualifications in the Detroit metropolitan area's racially segregated economy. One look, and the men in charge "knew" he couldn't cut it. He was one of the many conscientious people on the Ford assembly line in the 1950s and '60s who took issue with management indifference to quality and worked secretly to build better cars whenever possible. To earn extra money, he cut hair and painted houses. He died suddenly of high blood pressure on Father’s Day, 1966. He was 51. My mother died bravely and defiantly of cancer at 57, a week before Mother’s Day. By all rights, I should have died in Vietnam on Good Friday, 1971 when I was 24. My first book, The Invisible Warriors grew out of that experience. My brother died a few days after Easter in 1991. I haven’t looked forward to a holiday in a long time.

When I was in high school, I joined the Army Reserves on the condition that I would begin basic training after my graduation in the spring of ´64. At that age, big names, big titles and expensive suits impressed me. High-ranking officers in the Reserves were the men who wore the expensive suits in civilian life as high-ranking executives for major corporations. As a 17- year-old private, I trembled before the superior intellect of these men with the oak leafs or eagles on their collars. The only man in the 70th Training Division with a star was like a god.

All of that changed three years later when I found myself, an acting buck sergeant, in a strategy meeting at Fort Leonard Wood, MO, with the highest echelon of officers in the division. They had to have done much to get where they were, but they had only the fuzziest notion of how to arrive at where they wanted to go next. If it wan’t in a manual, they could’t do it. If it was in a manual, they asked me where to find it. When it became clear that I knew more about what was going on than any of them did, I was never again impressed by symbols of authority alone. It was how people performed that counted.

IQ scores say something about performance, if only that those with exceedingly high ones did exceedingly well one day on a battery of tests that some people revere. Like the others in my group of OJI’s without a college degree to speak for my "candle power," I do have an unwieldy IQ. Without it and the help of my friends, I would not have been allowed to show what I could do in the field of automotive design, because African-Americans were judged on sight to be unqualified. In 1989, the head of an experimental interior studio allowed me to create and apply a lead-time reduction process that is now used in product development worldwide. If you have seen the interior of any Ford car between 1985 and 1994 you have seen some of my interior work. If you’ver  seen an '86 Taurus, a '93 Probe or a '94 Mustang, you’ver seen some of my exterior work.

I was married in 1967 and I’ver been divorced since 1974. I’ver got 2 great kids, 6 beautiful grandchildren, lots of good friends and more than my share of good breaks.

Having to sue Ford Motor Company for the recognition I earned was one of the low points of my life. Actually, it was the longest low stretch of my life. In the first subheading of my book about my experience in automotive design I called it "Ten Years of Torture Bound and Gagged."  The "gagged" part of the subheading refers to the gag order placed on the plaintiffs by the Federal judge in the age and race discrimination lawsuit that began in 1992 and ended in 2002. This is the big lawsuit that you didn't hear about and the gag order is why you didn't hear about it.

I won the suit (which I'm not supposed to say on penalty of going to jail for eight years) but I wasn't allowed to take my case to a jury and the Arbitrator awarded me only eleven hundred dollars in back pay for one year and ten thousand dollars in emotional distress because of a  heart attack I suffered in 2001, which could be attributed only to unbearable stress. I did not and do not have a heart condition that anyone has ever heard of. Twelve hundred dollars went to my lawyer in up front costs. Five thousand dollars went to medical expenses that were not covered by insurance. Four thousand five hundred dollars went to the Arbitrator for agreeing to hear the case. I was forced out of my job and I nearly lost my home. Soon, you will be able to read all about that in Killing the Goose.... 

By the way, the picture of me in the corner was taken when I worked in the Probe studio in 1989.  I barely resembles it today. I can only assure you that the picture of the baggie-eyed, bald-headed old fart I will put in its place if I ever get around to it  is the same guy.

That’s enough about me. Now, if I can only get people to take a cold, hard look at a racist cop named Fuhrman, and his IQ, and his friends, and his accomplishments....