THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
sity. "This fella from Ford came
along and said, 'There's this terrific
opportunity in our personnel de-
partment.' It sounded like a good
idea to me so I came."
That terrific opportunity turned
out to be a job in Ford's Edsel Di-
vision. Three months after Green-
wald came aboard, the division col-
lapsed. "How could I be so bad so
quick?" he remembers asking him-
self.
He stayed in personnel, overse-
eing the administrative organization
of a new vehicle project which be-
came the Falcon, one of Ford's all-
time greatest. sales successes. From
there he progressed into other finan-
cial poSitions, ultimately presiding
over Ford's Venezuelan operations
following stints with Ford affiliates
in France and Brazil.
Greenwald's goals early in his
career were modest. "My horizon at
22 was about three years long. In
those days, Detroit and cars were an
exciting business. If I could describe
my goals, it was to make a contribu-
tion for a car company in labor rela-
tions, seek to earn $10,000 a year,
and be happily married."
Twenty-seven years later? "Well
I'm still in labor relations and I'm
happily married." And about that
salary. "I don't know what $10,000
would be these days" he says with a
smile. According to Business Week,
he's more than reached that goal too.
In their survey of the 25 highest-
paid corporate executives, the maga-
zine ranked Greenwald 12th with
annual and deferred compensation of
nearly $3.3 million in 1984.
When he answered the call at
the faltering Chrysler Corp. he had
already put in 22 years at Ford with
an unlimited future there. He had
been treated well and he was com-
fortably ensconced as president of
Ford de Venezuela. As Ford's top
man there, he oversaw a three-year
period where the company's em-
ployment in Venezuela tripled from
2,000 to 6,000, market share shot up
from 25 percent to 40 percent, and
profits jumped tenfold. As he puts it,
"If you ever heard of a big fish in a
little pond, that's what I was." And
his family could find no quarrel with
70-degree weather year 'round.
One day during the industry's
winter holiday break, he got a phone
message from a certain C.E.O. of Ita-
lian descent who formerly worked at
Ford. "I thought he wanted to talk
about something Chrysler was in-
volved with in Latin America." But
his wife Glenda sensed the true rea-
son for the call and urged him not to
return it.
But he did. "Ultimately, it was a
chance for me to see if I could really
do it in the major leagues. In my
business, it was a chance to play in
the Super Bowl, to see if I was good
enough." Henry Ford II tried to talk
him out of leaving, but the answer
was no.
When Greenwald joined
Chrysler as controller in April 1979,
the company had just announced a
$54 million loss for the first quarter.
They would net see a full-year profit
until 1982, and for a four-year
period the company lost almost $3.5
billion. Its market share sank to 7.8
percent (it now hovers around 12),
and its ranking in the "Fortune 500"
fell 15 notches in one year. It
seemed like the Edsel Division all
over again.
"All of a sudden I got the feeling
the other team all weighed about
300 pounds and we all weighed a
hundred pounds." He knew he was
coming to a sick company but he
underestimated the health of the
U.S. economy. "And in a matter of
months our whole industry got sick
and the economy got really sick."
Nationally, gas prices doubled,
interest rates doubled- and unem-
ployment hit 11 percent. "The wide,
wide swings in the economy were
unprecedented in modern history." •
In fact, the Big Three automakers
lost a combined $12.7 billion dollars
between 1980 and 1982 and the eco-
nomic impact in this region was de-
vastating.
Greenwald remembers the day-
to-day operations as hectic. Besides
using all the company's resources to
fight for federal loan guarantees,
"Every day there were at least two
blockbusters. I didn't know what
they'd be, but I knew when I came
here every morning I could find two
blockbusters, at least, and they were
do or die."
Most frustrating to Greenwald
was that "I'd never had anything
like that happen to me where I could
not reach back in my own experience
and say, 'Well there's how I solved it
last time.' Nor could I find anybody
else who I could reach out to who'd
been through it. We were reaching
to some new frontiers."
He says he never looked back to
question his move to Chrysler. "For
almost three years we ate, we slept
and we worked. There wasn't much
time to question it." He adds, "I felt
I was doing something that was
really special because I was a part of
trying to save 600,000 jobs."
Asked about Chrysler's chances
of obtaining the $1.1 billion in loan
guarantees if Ronald Reagan were
President in 1979 when the company
went to Washington for help,
Greenwald responds slowly. "I don't
know if we'd be here today. I'm often
asked that. It was coming up to an
election year. There were 600,000
jobs at stake. I'm glad we didn't
have to test it. Occasionally in the
present Administration I see a
strong, almost tenacious holding-on
to ideology. I just don't know (what
would have happened.)"
Fortunately for Greenwald, the
difficulty of Chrysler's struggle was
cushioned by his family: "Thank
goodness I had a very considerate
family. And we're a very close fam-
ily. They were very patient with me.
I tried very hard not to lose my cool
in business, and looking back on it,
I'm afraid I took a lot of it out at
home, and Glenda and my kids were
really very patient with me."
He attributes the understanding
nature of his family to their much-
traveled home life. "We've lived in
five different countries and our roots
have become ourselves."
The dark days at Chrysler
forced Greenwald to contemplate his
faith and his values. To him that
meant one thing — family.
"I grew up with a strong feeling
of family, that the family holds to-
gether no matter what. And I think
that Glenda and I have successfully
conveyed that same sense of impor-
tance to our kids."
His parents emphasized the no-
tion that "you got all the education
you could get. And I grew up with a
recognition of the work ethic and the
belief in the dignity of man. In fact,
if my father could've chosen, my
labor relations experience would've
been with a union instead of a com-
pany."
For a short while, Greenwald
had ideas of being a doctor, "But
when I couldn't find the veins in a
frog in biology, I realized it wasn't
for me." All that mattered to his
parents was that he work hard, get
through college and the rest would
take care of itself. That he got a
good education was so important to
his folks, Greenwald asserts, "that to
this day, one of the proudest mo-
ments of my life was seeing the
smile on my father's face when all
the various college scholarships
started coming in."
Gerald and Glenda Greenwald
Continued on next page
Friday, June 7, 1985
Should Gerald
Greenwald ascend
to the top, it would
be an historic
moment for the
company and the
industry.
15