General Motors, Decline and Fall,

1980 – 2009

William Sundwick

Founded in Flint, Michigan in 1908, the corporation that ushered in the automobile age in America and came to dominate the nation’s industrial economy by the 1970s, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy just after celebrating its centennial.

What happened?

In 1980, journalist/folklorist Ed Cray published his history of that corporation, Chrome Colossus: General Motors and Its Times. GM then held a 46 per cent share of the domestic U.S. auto market. Cray notes it had been over 50 per cent in the early to mid-1960s, inviting threats of anti-trust action from Congress, amplifying anger at GM manufacturing decisions concerning safety and lethargic pursuit of emissions reduction. The Boards of Directors in those days were confident they could ride over these assaults. They were right -- so long as sales and employment were strong and stock valuation high. I certainly felt no insecurity growing up as a teenager in a Flint GM family!

But there was an unseen threat building, starting in the 1970s, which should have foretold a deepening challenge to GM’s place in the automotive market.

It came from Japan, with its much younger automobile industry looking toward export markets, not just in the U.S., but around the world. The first Toyotas and Datsuns appeared on the West Coast in the late 1950s. A curiosity at first with little penetration even in California. But that penetration grew and went nationwide by the mid-70s. GM management did recognize that there was something peculiarly competitive about Japanese manufacturing. They sought to learn more about it via partnership with Toyota. NUMMI (New United Motors Manufacturing, Inc.) was formed in the early ‘80s at a closed GM plant in Fremont, California (since sold to Tesla). It produced both Chevrolets and Toyotas side-by-side on the same assembly line.

But NUMMI failed to change “The General.” What General Motors couldn’t understand was that the secret of Japanese manufacturing, and growing preference of U.S. consumers, had nothing to do with efficiency of the machinery in the plant. It was not the “culture” of employees (the old GM workers were rehired in Fremont). Instead, it was mainly the culture of management. The Fremont plant was run differently from other GM assembly plants, following the Japanese model. But apparently, corporate management failed to notice a fundamentally different job design. Workers in Fremont rotated among many different jobs, rather than simply tightening the same bolt every day for an eight-hour shift on thousands of cars.

GM had advance warning of this problem from the wildcat strike at Lordstown, Ohio in the early ‘70s – where sabotage led to slowdowns and generally low production quality of the new “import killer” small car launched there, the Chevrolet Vega. Production rates were punishing, workers took it out on the product. Yet corporate management took no notice. After the “experiment” at NUMMI, Japanese style “relational management” never spread to other plants. The Vega’s design was considered flawed, too, not merely its manufacturing quality. General Motors could not see its employees as anything more than cost centers, whether hourly and salaried engineers. The public could see the effects.

“Corporate culture” has become a popular trope over the last thirty years. It probably had its origin in the sad story of General Motors’ decline. The corporation had its beginning in the early days of the automobile, in an environment analogous to how we thought of Silicon Valley in the 1980s. It was where entrepreneurial ventures based on engineering advances were the foundation of economic growth. Billy Durant, the founder of the corporation, was the embodiment of that entrepreneurial, risk-all, American myth that surrounded figures like Steve Jobs in later times. Durant’s genius (some would call it recklessness) was his willingness to take a chance on a bevy of garage tinkerers he met in Michigan. The first of them was Flint mechanic David Buick, struggling with his own version of a horseless carriage. His Buick automobile was the brand that started General Motors. Durant, however, did not build the GM corporate culture. The myth of that industrial spirit was, instead, created by Alfred P. Sloan. Sloan led an ever more centralizing corporate Board through the 1920s and 1930s. The stable of brands assembled by Durant and his early associates had all been managed independently at the engineering and production level. They always had shared technology and parts, but Sloan made them mere “divisions,” subservient to the General Motors Board of Directors, directed jointly from Detroit and Wall Street. Sloan was the archetype modern corporatist.

Sloan organized the corporation around profit centers and marketing concepts. Any original ideas for products or engineering had to clear rigorous financial hoops – the “bean counters.” The overwhelming strength of the industrial engine this strategy created caused General Motors to be perceived as a key factor for allied victory when World War II came. Its then-president, William S. Knudsen, became FDR’s head of the War Production Board.

But, after the war, that old, inherently conservative, midwestern corporate culture returned -- unable to focus its marketing on anything but the ego-enhancing product differentiation that Sloan had pioneered starting in the 1920s. The five automotive brands that GM successfully hawked during the postwar years (Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Oldsmobile, and Cadillac) were distinguished mostly by size and flash – what would today be called “bling.” All were built on a similar platform with more engineering in common than unique. Chevrolets and Cadillacs were built during the period to be fundamentally the same, different enough only to make a convincing argument that the higher-priced brand was somehow “better.” This was, of course, illusion – manufacturing standards and quality control were identical at all GM plants.

GM corporate culture could not grasp the reason for the increasing success of Japanese imports through the 1970s and ‘80s. It was not their cars’ designs, but a combination of several factors. There was the above-mentioned relational style of management in plants (and with suppliers); the uncomfortable fact that legacy costs were low at the much younger Japanese firms (not as many retirees collecting pensions and benefits); and, yes, a less risk-averse product-planning style, greater willingness to take chances on new designs without the relentless bottom-line calculations, the Wall Street side, that dominated GM decision-making. It was the old company, Toyota the young company!

When the UAW chose to strike General Motors in 2007, the walkout lasted three days. But three days lost production was not enough to change GM’s ways. Market share in the U.S. by then was down to only 20 per cent, a far cry from thirty years earlier. The public had caught on, even if management had not. GM was a global enterprise, but European market share was declining as well, and China was just getting started. South American (primarily Brazilian) operations were significant, but not on the scale of North American or European. When Wall Street was hit by the 2008 crash, the General finally took off his stars and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009, the corporation’s 101^st anniversary. Only a massive U.S. government bailout saved GM from liquidation.

Arising from the ashes, the “new” General Motors, General Motors Company, LLC, promised to be leaner and better – not necessarily meaner. But global market share, even after selling off subsidiaries, and shuttering brands (Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, others), has not revived over the ensuing decade. By 2019, U.S. market share had eroded even further, to about 17 per cent. Had the General learned anything?

CEO Mary Barra has flirted with new products, especially electric vehicles, and claims the company will transition completely to EVs (well, 70 per cent by 2040), but we’ll see. The plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt was discontinued in 2019, with no replacement named. Lordstown, site of the painful wildcat strike decades earlier, was not reconfigured, but closed – then sold to a start-up who will manufacture all-electric pickup trucks there soon. Will the GM Cruise Division, formed to manufacture autonomous vehicles at its Hamtramck plant, ever see the light of day?

If I were a prudent investor, I would not buy GM stock.

Am I Old Yet?

An Update

William Sundwick

Warp & Woof has seen other pieces about getting old. It seems I owe the reader an update from time to time. I am now mid-way through my fifth year of retirement.

I wouldn’t contest the rationale for my exit from the Library of Congress after 42 years – the decision was a sound one, backed by sound reasoning. The retirement adventure began with excitement and enthusiasm in 2015. I was getting out before I got old. This was good. The first thing I noticed was what an incredible relief it was to sleep in every morning. (I am not a lark by nature, but an owl.)

As time passed, the distance increased from the institution I had served for the bulk of my life. I went back only once, within the first year after retiring – for a tour with our neighbors and their then seven-year-old grandson. He was impressed; me not so much.

By now, I can safely say that I’ve retained absolutely no knowledge of the things which qualified me for my highest-level position, and my status at the Library. It’s telling that I’ve written only one post in Warp & Woof about anything I learned from a career at the Library of Congress!

My wife’s situation is different. She still works there, in an analogous position to mine. We’ve discussed her retirement decision process using the same criteria I used in making my 2014 decision. It doesn’t work for her, since she has something I lacked – deep personal friendships with some of her colleagues. Even Facebook friends carried over from work are now fading from my active interest. Apparently, my professional life was rather shallow compared to hers.

My credo is “don’t look back” – that 42-year career is no different from my ancient childhood memories of growing up in Flint, Michigan. Nothing is forever.

Other social outlets have become suitable substitutes for whatever I lost from my professional relationships at the Library. There’s church, community, and my Writers’ Group. Then, there are my kids – and grandkids – all local still!

I am also fortunate that no major health concerns have emerged (yet). I find that good habits regarding fitness and diet do seem to pay dividends. Practicing good habits is the best way to do maintenance as we get older, even if gym memberships don’t necessarily constitute social engagement.

While some interests from earlier phases of life (even the first couple of post-retirement years) have waned – sex, cars, and computer/software geekery among them – others have emerged, like politics, philosophy, and popular music, seen as art. I feel my mind is still active; I read lots, listen to podcasts, and continue to write for this blog. I am immensely grateful for time spent with my two sons, and the grandkids. Babysitting is a joy!

So, when do I get old? Could it be when I become more absorbed with my legacy than my life? I don’t spend much time with that perennial question: “Will anybody miss me when I’m gone?” Ultimately, it doesn’t matter since I won’t be here to know. And memories are different from “missing” someone, anyway. But we do all have legacies.

I suspect mine will be divided between the concrete legacy (financial, educational, values transmitted to offspring) and the abstract legacy (impact on strangers and unborn generations). I can see evidence of the concrete legacy every day, but the abstract variety is more elusive. The latter might make me wonder what I was doing for 42 years at one of the world’s foremost cultural institutions. Screw it! Hardly anybody deserves the privilege to worry about those things, right? I’m not ready yet to spend time justifying my legacy, either variety, as “good.” Leave that for others to judge.

So, if I’m not old yet because I don’t worry about my legacy, am I maybe starting to get tired? The answer is both yes and no. As noted above, sleep is a motivator -- perhaps even more now than five years ago? But when awake I can usually still engage in lively conversation on any number of issues. I believe I have no difficulty getting people to understand what I’m saying. People, in general, are never tiresome – although my grandchildren can be very tiring!

A final indicator of being old might be the role dreams play in my life. Are they still there? I must confess to a “new boredom” at times. Much of what sparked my imagination in times past only elicits a “meh,” or yawn, now. Perhaps I need to find new emotional stimuli? Cultural conditioning is a constraint here in my response to art. I always look to younger folks (like my kids) for help in this area. Millennials are still the best interlocutors for art appreciation.

Whether I decide to define myself as old or not, there remain the Erik Erikson developmental stages of life. I am now wrestling with stage 8, “Integrity vs. Despair” – working full-time on the complete integration of my personality. This is the final act. I’m waiting only for stage 9, the hypothetical one suggested just before the Eriksons’ deaths, where everything rewinds back to the beginning!

I should be asking myself if there is anyone I missed – any debts I still owe? Are there still some opportunities to exploit? And, if I’m truly old, I need to start prioritizing what to do with the time left. Should I start leaving Post-It notes? “But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep” – Robert Frost.

Van Slyke Assembly, 1967

Music for the Shop Rat

William Sundwick

It was a lark. Something to do during college term break. I had just returned from a “career-service” internship experience in Washington, D.C. And, frankly, I was curious about what an auto assembly line was like. It was the defining social construct of my hometown -- Flint, Michigan -- but I had never seen one in action.

So, I signed up for a tour of the plant located directly across the street from the new townhouse my parents had just bought. It was their last address before leaving Flint forever, for Florida retirement. Odd, you may think, that this new townhouse development was built across the street from one of Flint’s premier General Motors manufacturing facilities, but there was a tall board-on-board fence separating it from the traffic noise of Van Slyke Road, blocking the view of the acres of factory occupying the equivalent of 20 adjacent city blocks.

In 1967 Flint was reaching peak “civilization,” still proud of its GM connections (indeed, General Motors was founded there in 1908). To see the lifeblood of my city close-up seemed an obligation, since I had already been talking up Flint with college friends in Kalamazoo.

I found myself overwhelmed by what I saw – and heard – inside, during the two-hour tour. It was a choreographed musical!

I had not been brought up with popular music. All music heard in my parents’ house was classical, especially violin and string orchestra. That was my father’s requirement. He was a failed violinist in his youth. Now he was an engineer, the head of process engineering at another GM plant in town.

It was perhaps that violinist’s artistic sensibility, combined with the process engineer’s dedication to efficient production methods, that led me to my profound aesthetic awakening after visiting that mammoth industrial facility.

I attribute my lifelong love of hard blues/rock music to the experience. Truly, this is the only style of music that fits the gritty, monotonous, obsessive life of the shop rat. I do not mean to imply that all assembly line workers loved that music – but, to me, the genre perfectly captures the spirit of the line. And, when done well, provides the seeds of an uplifting release from the grim drudgery of any job.

Those brightly colored Chevrolet Impalas marched down the assembly line in precisely timed formation, randomly distributed body styles and trims, based on an unseen production manifest. The shop rats’ responsibility was to put those cars together, unceasingly over an eight-hour shift, five days a week, each having a strictly defined small piece of the job.

And with the crashing noise of the stamping presses precisely timed, there was an unmistakable rhythm to the spectacle. Watching hundreds of workers below us, from an observation deck, all doing their repetitive ballet – it was real artistry. And, incredibly taxing, physically and mentally. When their shift was over, the urge to escape would be overpowering. At home, or at a local bar, as Ben Hamper relates in his seminal memoir of life on the assembly line, Rivethead. (Hamper worked in the same Van Slyke assembly plant in the ‘70s and ‘80s, then part of GM’s Truck and Bus Division). To a shop rat, music was likely an important part of that escape. As it was for me – but, the release I sought was from a different sort of stress.

Hamper had a dysfunctional psychological sense of destiny – he was a third generation Flint (and GM) shop rat, literally following in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. I was first generation Flint and would never rely on an hourly rate factory job for income. I think I knew this, rationally, even in 1967. Yet, that tour of the Van Slyke plant showed me a world that I must have felt inside me. At each job station along the line, the task was to rivet, weld, or lift, one part of the overall vehicle, and only that one part. I feared It was the same as most jobs in life.

I had resolved at this point in my college career to be a history major, with English minor. Teaching was my chosen field – but I was uncertain whether I could advance directly to grad school. Draft deferments did not extend to graduate work. It was 1967.

Would I ever be able to do more? How much responsibility could I really handle?

So, I felt a great deal of stress about my future. It was something I could not control. But I had music. Not the classical music of my childhood, but angry, revolutionary music. The music of marginalized people who had no control over their futures. People like Ben Hamper, the “Rivethead.”

I had already collected some LPs since I had been at Kalamazoo College. Mostly Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and the like. My favorite album at the time was Aftermath by the Stones. It seemed dark to me. Paint It Black was perhaps my favorite song. But, on the album, not featured as a single, no air play, was another: Going Home. This song may have captured the beat of the assembly line better than any I knew then.

The cars are no longer made in Flint. Music was never made there. Detroit, on the other hand, did produce music! As far back as the 1940s, long before Motown, John Lee Hooker landed in that city during the Great Migration from Mississippi. He personified “Detroit Blues,” invented while he worked in a Ford plant. Music never left Detroit. Iggy Pop came from nearby Ann Arbor in the 1960s, same era as MC5.  Even as late as the 1990s, Detroit was still producing artists like Jack White. I didn’t know these musicians in 1967, but there were the Stones (and other early “British Blues”), seemingly representing a similar industrial culture.

Throughout my life, I’ve been compelled to return to the anxiety, and bitterness, of the 19-year-old on that plant tour. It was important. More music, along the same lines as the styles I liked then, has come into my life since, but with modifications and improvements, much like cars have changed and improved over a similar time span.

Those Chevy Impalas, and the trucks that Ben Hamper assembled, were for the people. The music was as well. Workers were drawn to the assembly line because of good pay and benefits. Rock musicians were drawn to their calling because of its demand pricing. Fewer opportunities were available to either than to the privileged who could get an education and move away from places like Flint. Here there were majestic and powerful machines, like those rock drum riffs. The leitmotiv of amplified lead guitar was like the “dumpster hockey” Hamper and his colleagues wasted time playing when the line slowed or stopped. The angry lyrics of the front man were the profanity-laced banter of the shop rats.

The psychic need to escape, without the means. Hamper ultimately departed the shop only due to disability – he went directly from the rivet line at Van Slyke to a mental outpatient facility, permanently laid off, found shooting hoops in a cameo in Michael Moore’s film, “Roger and Me.”

I never experienced that sort of release with music, but in some ways, when listening to my iTunes playlists while working out at my gym, I feel like the Rivethead at that mental health clinic. Perhaps there never was an escape from Flint?

Vanishing City or Phoenix from the Ashes?

Flint Series, Chapter 6

William Sundwick

Gordon Young published Tear-Down in 2013. It’s his memoir of returning to Flint as an adult after presumably leaving the city forever to pursue a journalism career in San Francisco. It was written before the Flint Water Crisis (2014 - to date).

Young describes the Civic Park neighborhood of his youth, his strong family ties and social engagement shared by most in the city during the seventies and eighties.  He knew about the massive depression enveloping the city after the departure of General Motors; the unemployment, the crime, and, most of all, the collapse of real estate values! That’s what motivated him to buy a reno house for $3000, close to his old neighborhood, abandoned and in need of major repairs (stripped of its copper plumbing, among other things).

Through the course of working on his house, he met many of the figures who might begin to make Flint a real city again. He was impressed by what he encountered. But, in the end, he gave up and returned to San Francisco. It was “too heavy a lift,” he decided. The resources required for scaling his efforts up to make a significant dent in the blight were too great. Hence, his subtitle: “Memoir of a Vanishing City.”

Yet, even with the Water Crisis seemingly adding another nail in Flint’s coffin, a little bit of online research (and my own 2014 visit to Flint) points in a more positive direction. It may not be cause for unbridled optimism, but the replacement of pipes and mains throughout the city is still scheduled to be completed sometime in 2019, and the water source has been switched back to safer “Detroit water.” There are still nearly 8000 GM jobs in Flint (a far cry from the 80,000 jobs of forty years ago, but still). And, some downtown renovation is apparent, a thriving farmers’ market, and a vibrant arts scene encouraged by local community organizations. The Flint Cultural Center is still a going concern sixty years after its founding with C.S. Mott Foundation largesse.

As the population of the city declined, and private or charter schools arrived, Flint Community Schools dwindled as an institution. This makes me sad, but it should not be considered an unmitigated negative. Even in my day, some of Flint’s brightest lights were products of the strong parochial schools in the city (see: Michael Moore’s memoir, Here Comes Trouble, 2011). In the mid-sixties, there were four public high schools in the city, now there is only one – Southwestern Academy (formerly Southwestern High School).

The brain drain experienced in Flint over four-plus decades is no different from that of any other rust belt city in decline. Job markets control demographics for the better educated even more than for the unskilled, who often don’t have the means to leave. Additionally, “white flight” to suburban locations was no less a factor in Flint than many other cities in mid-century America.

Yes, it’s largely about racism. Flint did have one of the first open housing ordinances in the country (1967), and one of the first African-American mayors (Floyd J. McCree, 1966). During this period new GM plants were built in the suburbs – before closing completely! Genesee County’s population didn’t decline nearly as much as the city over that forty-year devolution of Flint.

In June 2014, I returned to Flint for a Sundwick cousins’ reunion (no aunts or uncles left by then, except one in Traverse City, who couldn’t travel). The Flint water supply had already been diverted to the Flint River by then, but none of us knew it. We didn’t drink city water, anyway. My cousin Carol, who hosted the reunion, lived in suburban Grand Blanc. Cousin John was kind enough to take me on a tour of the city, such as it was by that time. We saw downtown, we saw Civic Park, we saw the East Village and Cultural Center, we saw Carriage Town, the birthplace of General Motors more than a century earlier.

And, we saw the house on Winona Street  where I grew up. It was clearly occupied, as were most in the Ballenger Highway neighborhood. In fact, if anything, the neighborhood was more attractive than I remembered it from the sixties – the trees were more mature, offering plenty of shade on that summer day. Houses were generally well-maintained, with fresh paint, landscaping, mowed lawns. But, nevertheless, when I suggested getting out of the car and walking, John was quick to say, “I don’t think that’s a great idea.” Why? It was the middle of the day on a Sunday, seemed peaceful enough, although I don’t recall seeing anybody on the sidewalks. I believe John’s fears were based on us being white! That hadn’t even occurred to me at the time. It seems so bizarre to me, having lived in the cosmopolitan, diverse world of Northern Virginia more than half my life now.

But, John had different experiences. They were, unfortunately, more akin to my father’s fears of 1965 when Dad declared, “We have to move outside the city. You know they’re almost to Welch Boulevard!?”  No need to explain who “they” were. My parents sold the house, for about the same price they had paid 12 years earlier, then moved to Flushing as soon as I graduated from high school. They didn’t even wait to find another house – we lived in a rental apartment for a few months, before they moved into a new townhouse development (back in the city, but behind a wall and gate!). Their paranoia about crime and property values was the final straw for me. I went off to college in Kalamazoo that fall, cured of any desire to return to such unpleasant dynamics.

<![endif]-->The city did experience a long, slow decline. But, somehow, through it all, there has consistently been a core of community activists and concerned citizens who have insisted on making lemonade from lemons. The Flint Public Art Project (FPAP) has been sending volunteers to turn abandoned houses into works of art. A developer has converted the historic Durant Hotel in Downtown to loft apartments. The rococo Capitol Theatre downtown has been renovated and reopened. Farmers’ Market reopened in 2014 and has become a community gathering place in the center of Downtown. University of Michigan-Flint has an active Resource Planning and Social Work department where students have been imagining Flint futures, especially for the Civic Park neighborhood. Public organizations have raised funds to renovate and rehabilitate some grand old Victorian homes in Carriage Town. Kettering University, at the base of the Carriage Town neighborhood, is a respected engineering school, formerly known as General Motors Institute.

The indoor

It would be unrealistic to expect any future population growth for Flint. The industrial framework that supported tens of thousands of unskilled workers will never return. But, perhaps there is an even more noble future for this city – one that grows organically from deeper roots in that former logging transit across fords on the Flint River.

Some will stay. They will provide a different kind of growth for Flint. It will be growth in spirit and heart. The factories are gone, but they were the transient parts of my Flint experience, anyway. Something else is still there. It is Flint’s soul.

Exit Strategy

Was Getting Out Inevitable?

Flint Series, Chapter 5

William Sundwick

Sometimes I think that friendships are simply a matter of convenience. While many people seem to make life-long friendships with kids they grew up with, my experience has been different. I lost contact with my childhood friends in high school, lost touch with my high school friends while we were all away at college, didn’t pursue college friends after the post-college diaspora. Indeed, even grad school, which was right here in the DC area, didn’t produce any lasting relationships, despite many of us staying here to pursue our careers.

No, my life has been marked by associations based on externalities, convenience, common interests – and those interests have changed over the years.

Through high school, in Flint, my primary interest focused on my future. Not that the present was so bad, just that it seemed to have no growth possibilities. Flint was already as big as anybody in my world could imagine it. My friends would say, “Well, you may not know where you’ll end up, but it sure as hell won’t be here!” My mother said with a look of anguish on her face, “Surely you must come up with a plan to go somewhere else?” My father mostly would laugh at the prospect of coming back to Flint after college – “What, and work for GM?” he chortled. And, he had been a General Motors “lifer.”

Only the “other Sundwicks” in Flint had any sense of attachment to the city. Perhaps it came from their mother’s family, the Stebbins. Perhaps it was from the complex web of social interconnections that the three siblings had woven over more years than my relatively brief Flint lifespan. As it turned out, only one of the three left Flint – middle cousin, Bob.

During one foray back to Flint, in 1979, staying with cousin John, I contacted a high school friend who was still in Flint (hadn’t seen him in more than a decade). He had graduated from MSU in E. Lansing, with a degree in oriental philosophy, and was working as a computer programmer for the City of Flint and raising his young family there. He was the exception.

Everybody else from high school, by that time, was far away. Even though, in 1979, I didn’t know where any of them were, it seemed inevitable they wouldn’t be In Flint.  I believe it was inevitable for me, and I never needed an exit strategy.

Once Google was available, I discovered a Ph.D. dissertation from friend Nate. And my mother had informed me, when I moved to Northern Virginia, that childhood friend Charles had married a “Korean girl” and was living in Reston. I never contacted him, though. I have no idea what happened to Abe, best of friends through both junior high and high school. But, it didn’t matter. The deed was done, escape effected. All who came before erased from memory.

Is there something wrong with me?

Once, during a trip from Kalamazoo in my college senior year (1968-69), I dropped in unannounced at Abe’s house on Mackin Road and talked with his younger brother, Sol. I introduced my girlfriend of the moment, who had driven there with me.

What transpired in the conversation is fuzzy, but one haunting aside from Sol keeps impinging on my consciousness. I believe he interjected, almost unnoticed by me at the time, “You know Abe is gay, right?” I think I didn’t want to acknowledge the import of that. I didn’t reply. In high school, he often joked (I thought) about “us” being “queer” – I had always taken it as a lame excuse for our not being able to find attractive girls to date at the time. I guess the meaning was deeper for him.

I’ve often wondered what happened to Abe during the AIDS epidemic of the eighties. But, I never followed up to locate Sol or Abe. No trace of either on Facebook, Twitter, or Google.

Abe had been the ringleader of the whole Get Out of Flint movement, not that there was much opposition from anybody else in our crowd. But, he was the most vociferous. Could he have been motivated by some personal animus against that conventional blue-collar midwestern city? His alienation may have been stronger than the rest of ours, and not just because of his Holocaust survivor parents, either!

All this leads me to wonder if any of us has an obligation to our hometown. What is it about place that can inspire loyalty, a desire to return after leaving? To “give back”?

In the case of Flint, the city has become known everywhere over the last thirty years as a dying place. Poisoning its residents through willful negligence has only been the “icing on the cake” of a three-decades-long disinvestment by its corporate overlord, General Motors, and by politicians not beholden in any way to those residents – the poorest city in the country, from a 2017 survey. Flintoids don’t have the money to buy the politicians. And, that generations-long brain drain, common to many rust belt cities, depletes any wherewithal to resist. We all shed a tear for Flint, but what have we done about it?

In the last chapter of my saga, I will try to shed some light on where the city is now. Some folks there remain optimistic, others are merely trying to keep expectations low. Is the popular local meme true? -- “Flint, coming soon to a city near you!”

Wasteland vs. Intellectual Ferment

Or, My Parents’ World vs. My World, High School Years

Flint Series, Chapter 4

William Sundwick

Flint Central High School was a new adventure. High school then comprised three years: grades ten, eleven, and twelve.

That meant one of my early high school experiences, in Spring 1963, was taking “Drivers’ Ed,”  which included behind-the-wheel time at a fancy new road course built on the grounds of Flint’s newest high school, Southwestern. Not satisfied with classroom content and a driver’s test at the local DMV, ours included “real” driving experience on streets with stop signs, traffic lights, and opposing traffic. And, the kicker, it was at the wheel of a choice of brand-new donated Buicks! Yes, this was Flint. Like everything in the city, if GM could figure out a way to encourage future customers, they would do it, including a high school drivers’ education program.

When I was fifteen, that was exciting.

The Resistance

However, I was now embedded with peers who were not so excited about cars and the auto industry. Their parents did not work for the “chrome colossus” of General Motors. They saw themselves as independent of the Flint mainstream; indeed, above it.

Dan, Nathan, Abe and his younger brother Sol (“Manny”), were all children of Holocaust survivors who somehow managed, separately, to find their way to Flint after spending early childhood in New York or Uruguay (in Nate’s case). They were all products of a strong Yiddish/Polish family culture. How did they come to live in Flint, these guys the same age as me?

I was a privileged transplant from Dearborn, whose paternal family were Scandinavians drifting down from the Upper Peninsula, and maternal family solid midwestern Scotch-Irish. My maternal grandfather was a Methodist preacher.

But my crowd was not my dad’s or Uncle Bob’s kind of people. None of my circle were cogs in GM’s wheel! Charles, my Ternstedt friend from earlier days, faded away after elementary school, perhaps due to his family being TOO close to my father’s work life (involving his dad’s performance evaluations from my dad?).

This group had parents who were shopkeepers, house-painters, and CPAs. But everybody in Flint was in some way beholden to General Motors, even if they did not work for “the man.” Success of their businesses indirectly depend upon him. When Flint’s population reached 200,000  in the sixties, that was about as big as a “company town” could get.

While in high school I was unaware of the glorious history of the sit-down strikes in the thirties, or the ultimate surrender of the UAW to corporatism in those post-war boom years. But, I was aware, even in my junior high years, of the acrid smell of stale cigarette smoke and half-emptied Manhattans in the living room on weekend mornings, left from the previous night’s corporate (Ternstedt plant, anyway) bridge parties. I thought to myself, “is this what I want to do for entertainment when I grow up?”

As my cultural affiliations solidified, the answer became clear -- no! And, it’s not because bridge isn’t a fascinating card game. But, I perceived a rot in the social fabric of those gatherings. It seemed a wasteland to me.

My friends had one thing in common. They were all uncommonly smart. Why they deigned to hang with me is still baffling, but I was flattered. We developed an understanding. None of us would come back to Flint once we escaped.

If anticipation of refugee status may have been natural for the Holocaust Children, it was not for me. They were well equipped for scraping by in jobs beneath their station – as their immigrant parents had done. I was too privileged to contemplate making huge sacrifices; instead, I hoped for lucky breaks.

The Academy

In addition to my social circle, there was also something about Flint Central’s location which had an important influence on my intellectual development. It would later be called the “East Village,” home not only to my high school, but the Flint College and Cultural Center. During my time at Central (1962-65), it included the shiny, modern steel and glass public library, a planetarium, art institute, concert hall, and the Flint Community College campus (now Mott College). Adjoining the East Village was the University of Michigan-Flint campus. The entire Cultural Center was developed primarily via the philanthropy of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. C.S. Mott, himself, also lived in his wooded estate, Applewood, adjoining the Center. Mott had been a co-founder of General Motors, and his foundation was primarily dedicated to improving the hometown of the corporation that created his wealth. It’s called “giving back.”

The land for the Cultural Center came from Applewood. But, Mott wasn’t the only notable who maintained a domicile in the East Village. Professors, including the first Dean of UM-Flint, lived there. I once went out with his daughter, my chemistry lab partner on that afternoon in November 1963 when the P.A. announcement told us that President Kennedy had been shot!

In fact, much of Flint’s “old money” lived in the neighborhood. I remember meeting a friend of a friend at his home there -- it had a butler’s pantry and dumbwaiter. He didn’t go to Flint Central, but to Georgetown Prep in Maryland!

So, there were the New York Jews, all of them left-wing intellectuals, the College and Cultural Center and East Village neighborhoods, and the C. S. Mott Foundation’s beneficence, all contributing to my evolving state of mind in high school. What else led to this ferment? 

The Actors

My mother. She was very proud of her hard-earned college degree from UM-Flint, after part-time studies as an adult, and a mom! She confidently marched into her high school English classroom in Flushing, a Flint suburb. At first, she felt she was reaching many of her students.

But, after a few years (by the time I was in high school), she had decided to call it quits. Her main complaint was the principal. She felt stifled by him, and generally devalued -- apparently a common experience for many teachers.

But, she did successfully tutor my cousin Bob (John’s older brother) in English when he returned to Flint from Tampa. He had a rough time in English. But, after her coaching, he was able to get into college, and from there to graduate school, and ultimately a professorship back in Florida.

Dad was there as well, but somehow didn’t contribute the same burning intellectual desire as Mom. He was an engineer, I would choose a different path.

Among my own teachers at Flint Central, four stand out: John Greenleaf Howe, Dale Kildee, Gayle Heyn, and James Graham Provan. Each played a significant role in shaping my future.

John G. Howe was my 10^th grade social studies teacher. Instead of world history, the traditional grade ten social studies curriculum, Flint called it “foreign relations” (probably to appease the local John Birch Society chapter – with their anti-communist agenda). He was a self-styled Republican politico, impressing me with the hard-nosed “realpolitik” behind his course’s topic.

He sponsored an after-school club, called the Reliques Society, which met in students’ homes, including mine. My socially conscious mom was slightly suspicious of the exact nature of this apparent “secret society” – but, she finally decided if it was endorsed by the Flint Community Schools, it must be okay.

Dale Kildee taught Latin. He also emphasized the political process, especially as practiced in the Roman Empire! A former Catholic seminarian, he left the order to teach in public schools.

After I graduated, he left teaching to pursue politics himself – becoming a 17-term Congressman before announcing his retirement in 2010, to be replaced by his younger nephew, Dan (who still represents Flint in Congress).

Gayle Heyn was my French teacher, who assured me that there was civilization beyond Flint – and it mostly spoke French! She became Gayle Kildee later, accompanying husband Dale to Lansing, then Washington.

Graham Provan was my U.S. history teacher. He taught me that American history wasn’t what I thought, by emphasizing its blemishes -- especially relevant in those days of civil rights struggles in the South.

Collectively, they showed me how politics equates with power.

The high school debate team (where I earned a varsity letter) can’t be ignored, either. It taught me about logic, argumentation, and research.

Yet, I pursued none of this after college. I lost something when I left Flint – where did it go?

Arrival and Insertion, 1953-62

The Flint Series, Chapter 3

William Sundwick

Flint grew rapidly in the early fifties. The 1950 Census pegged its population at about 163-thousand, but by 1960 it was 197-thousand. We all noticed it.

New neighborhoods, like our Ballenger Highway neighborhood, were adding single family houses, in ours mostly “ranch-style” (often called “ramblers” on the East Coast), at such a rate that services couldn’t keep up.

Schools needed to be expanded quickly. Since the nearest elementary school to us was over a mile away (no buses), four hastily erected prefab “primary units” for grades K-3 served as a stopgap.  These one room units, identical except for paint color, were in use until we moved out in 1965, when the new Anderson Elementary School finally opened in the neighborhood.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Elementary/Junior High School had been built on Chevrolet Avenue in 1928, only a few blocks north of the old “Chevy in the Hole” complex. This was the original dedicated Chevrolet and Buick assembly location, built in the teens. From 4^th grade on, I was deemed capable of walking safely the short mile from my house to the school.

It was a pleasant enough walk, except in winter when Flint became frozen tundra for four months.  I seldom had to walk alone, always accompanied by chums in my grade. It was a friendly neighborhood, with many kids my age.

We strolled down Winona Street four blocks to Mackin Road, then east on Mackin another five blocks. It was a big school compared to those one-room prefab primary units. There was a spacious playground, a gym, and a library.

My friends included Abe, who lived on Mackin Road – I stopped at his house each morning to pick him up, and we walked together. He was the elder son of Holocaust survivors who had somehow found themselves in Flint, moving from New York (Brooklyn?) a couple years earlier.

There was also Charles. He walked from his house on Begole Street a block away, and we would proceed from there. Some tensions arose later with Charles, as our world views took on shades of plant management. His dad was my father’s subordinate at Ternstedt.

My cousin John Sundwick, the youngest of my Uncle Bob’s three kids, was a year behind me in school, and lived only about four blocks away on Lavender Street; but, alas, our Elementary School paths never crossed, since school districts in Flint placed the boundary between Civic Park Elementary and Longfellow between us. Ballenger Highway was an insurmountable barrier to walking without crossing guards or lights, for kids our age. In Junior High, defined as grades 7-9, the “other Flint Sundwicks” lived in Florida, returning later to the Flint area.

In those frigid winter months, or on any rainy days, I remember rides proffered only by my own mother. Other moms didn’t seem to step up. Did they not have access to a car? In Flint? That’s possible, since there might not have been many two-car families in our predominantly working-class neighborhoods. Mom’s 1953 Chevy did yeoman’s service for seven years.

Michael Moore, in his memoir about growing up in Flint, “Here Comes Trouble” (2011), declared mid-century industrial Flint a relatively classless society. He wrote of living on the same block with doctors and lawyers, even though his own father was an hourly-rate assembly line worker at AC Spark Plug .  The same was true in my Ballenger Highway neighborhood – indeed, except for my own closest friends, I had no idea what people’s dads (and moms) did for a living. It was never a topic of conversation. And, even somebody as class-conscious as my mother, who put much effort into “social climbing” (allegedly for my dad’s career), would never say an unkind word about any of our neighbors, their income, education, or social status.

I learned later, in high school, that the Ternstedt people, except my friend Charles’ family, were ensconced in wealthier neighborhoods in town.

As the sixties arrived, our neighborhood was completed. The newest houses were somewhat larger and fancier than the originals like ours. Split levels appeared in the late fifties. And we learned that some people moving into them were part of a “professional” class, self-employed (especially doctors, tax accountants, funeral directors) – not necessarily reliant on General Motors for employment.

This change may have separated our neighborhood from the adjoining old Civic Park neighborhood, which was expressly built by GM for its workers in the teens and twenties. Despite the abandoned houses, vacant lots, and ghostly shell of an empty Haskell Community Center, a historical marker at Bassett Park, its former centerpiece, still stands to recognize this. Civic Park epitomizes the “old” Flint better than any other neighborhoods on the west side of town. It may symbolize the death of the city as well.

 I always noticed what kind of cars were in my neighbors’ driveways. Back then, people changed cars frequently, typically every two years. They all had a sense of loyalty to Mother GM, apparently reasoning they could secure their own paychecks by buying its cars. Almost always Buicks and Chevrolets, the specific model, equipment, etc. waxed large in my observation. But we were the only folks in the neighborhood with a new Cadillac every year, from 1954-1958, until Dad’s career flatlined after his first coronary. We immediately switched to Chevy.

We did have two cars still, and a garage for them. Did the neighbors talk, when my dad courageously switched to the lowest-priced “stripped down” Chevy in 1958? My mom was embarrassed, and she told us as much! I had grown fond of the Cadillacs, too, but looking back I now understand my dad’s rather powerful social statement. Why did we care, really, about the Caddies? Did it matter what the neighbors thought?

My world changed when I entered Flint Central High School for the 1962-63 school year. It was the Harvard of Flint public high schools, the oldest (1923), situated near the Flint College and Cultural Center. And, all I had to do to get there was live in its district, which included a narrow swath on the west side of town (perhaps drawn for racial gerrymandering or integration?). It also included the “East Village” neighborhood – home to Flint’s old money, and intellectual elite.

It was a new world, indeed. Eventually, it led to a strong desire to escape!