His most vivid memories are of his storied working career at Ford Motor Co. He remains the highest seniority employee in the company's 100+ year history. After 65 years of service for the company, he served an additional 4 years at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn where he was a guide on the Ford Factory Tour. As we talked about this, and about Stephen Christopher Harris, I remembered writing about it...
Originally posted to Yahoo 360, February 12, 2007
Retirement Celebration – Sixty-Five Years of Service
Ford Motor Company World Headquarters
Executive Dining Room
Dearborn, Michigan October 13th 2004
Because my online friend Alex asked, here is the story of my father, William Burnette Flournoy, Sr. In the relatively few months since I came out to my father, although we’re still quite distant, he and I have grown closer than we’ve been since I was a very young boy. He’s even met the love of my life, Stephen and we all went out to dinner and had a very pleasant time; it was an evening that I could never have imagined just a year ago. In addition to my father learning many things about me including that I’m gay, I’ve learned a great deal about him that I never knew before… And since Alex asked, I’ll share it here.
For most of the twentieth century, the largest industrial complex in the world…
As I thought about how to tell the story of my father, or at least that part of his story that I know, I realized that I should start with the “great achievement” he talks of the most. My father is very proud that he attained an enviable record of service in his working career. My father retired from Ford Motor Company on the anniversary of his sixty-fifth year of service. He left the company as the all-time record holder for service longevity. He spent more time in active employment with Ford (all 65 years at the sprawling Rouge Complex in Dearborn than any other employee including all the Ford offspring who’ve run the company over the years. Only the company’s founder, Henry Ford spent more time with the company that still bears his name.
Executive Dining Room, Ford World Headquarters
Front row – Deborah, Holiday, Father, Lisa
Back row – Darrell, William Jr., Christopher
My brothers and sisters and I were invited to attend his retirement celebration at Ford World Headquarters (known to Detroiters as the “Glass House”). It was the first time I’d seen my Father since my mother’s funeral five months earlier. It was quite a surreal experience to walk the halls of one of the world’s largest manufacturing concerns and listen to everyone applaud my father’s achievement. When we arrived at the executive dining room overlooking the corporate campus, my father was surrounded by a line of more than a hundred company executives waiting to shake his hand and offer their congratulations. The look in my father’s eyes said it all… he was both happy and sad. He was celebrating an achievement that is unlikely to ever be surpassed and he was mourning the end of perhaps the most significant phase of his life – his working career.
When my sister and I were finally able to get to my father, he hugged and kissed us both, it was the first time I’d been kissed by my father since I was a young boy. Then to my surprise, my father took my arm and walked me around the room introducing me to his many work colleagues. It was not until then that I realized for the first time in my adult life, that my father was proud of me and the accomplishments of my life that he knew of. As I walked with him and heard incredible stories of his tenacity and relentless pursuit of excellence in his work from his managers and subordinates as well, I knew I was proud of him too.
Global Headquarters of Ford Motor Company
Number One American Road, Dearborn, Michigan
When Ford was celebrating its 100th year in business in the summer of 2003, my father got to share in the limelight. He was featured in corporate advertisements and regularly spent time with then CEO, Bill Ford. I was very surprised when I was called early that spring by a reporter from the Detroit News who had read a piece about my father in a company magazine and wanted to know my memories of my father’s working career up to that time. The reason I was surprised was that I’d had very little contact with my father over the 25+ years up to that time.
You see my father and I really only had a relationship until I was thirteen years old. Then, after my parents divorced, although he maintained a relationship with my other brothers and sisters, I felt I was more or less rejected by him. The last time I spent any time with him as a boy was on my birthday the summer I was sixteen; my father and I went to the movies together… I still remember the film we saw, it was called “The Final Countdown.” When it became available on videocassette, I bought it and I would watch it whenever I felt down about not having my father as a part of my life. Although we lived in the same city, including that movie on my birthday, I saw him on only three occasions between 16 and 40 years old, and the last of those three occasions was my mother’s funeral in May of 2004.
So although I was surprised to be asked about my father by the newspaper reporter, as it turned out, he was asking the right person. I’ve always been the “collector” in my family… I’m the one who over the years had saved the photographs and other mementoes of our family’s life. As it turned out, I had saved many of my father’s things that he left behind when my parents separated. I didn’t know why until several years later, but in 2001, my father called me for the first time as an adult and asked me if I knew where any of the things he’d left behind were. He told me that the reason he wanted them was for a story to be featured in Ford World (the company’s internal employee magazine). He said his long service came to light almost by accident; a human resources manager stumbled across the fact that his anniversary date was more than sixty years ago and not believing it was correct, contacted him to verify it. That led to the magazine story which later led to the newspaper article.
I told my father that I had kept his things all those years and I could give them to him whenever he wanted. We arranged for him to meet with me at my office to get them. But on the appointed day, I was let down when he didn’t show up and when he later call to say he’d send a friend to come instead to pick them up. Since I then knew I probably wouldn’t be seeing my father, I wrote him a letter about what having his things had meant to me and I placed it in the box of carefully preserved items that were picked up from my office late that night by his friend Walt.
This is the letter I included in the gift wrapped box I gave Walt for my father:
Dear Dad,
Here are the things that you asked for. I have kept and cherished them for the last 20 years, and I hope that you’ll again let me keep them. They have been a tangible link to you my father.
I have tried to preserve these things to the best of my ability. I have kept them in a tightly closed cedar trunk. I would suggest keeping them put away in the envelopes that I have them in. The photos should definitely be kept out of the light. Because most of the items are now very fragile, I carefully copied them for you so that you needn’t have to handle them extensively. If someone is going to prepare a biography for you based on these, I’d suggest that you give them the copies and not the originals.
Again, I hope you’ll consider letting me keep these things again… I love them since they have represented you for me over many, many years. Let me know if you need anything else.
Love, your son,
Christopher
(What’s a slide rule?)
The box included among other things, my father’s high school yearbook, his slide rule, letters and papers from his career at Ford, and even his 25th Anniversary Watch given to him the year I was born in 1964. There were also pictures from his service in WWII (another part of his story I’ll tell later…), and newspaper clippings as well as a book Ford Motor Company printed and gave to all its employees and dealers in 1953 called “Ford at Fifty” when the company celebrated 50 years in business.
Antique Fords on display at the 100th Anniversary Celebration
Summer 2003 – Ford World Headquarters
I remember feeling very strange two years later as I was answering the newspaper reporter’s questions during the interview. He had dredged up memories and feelings that I had suppressed for many years. As I noted the reporter’s impressed responses to my recollections, I realized that I had never really told anyone of my father’s career accomplishments or my pride in them. It was then that I hoped someday I might have a relationship with him again and be able to talk with him about his work, WWII, and our family. When the story was published in the newspaper, I was very proud of my father although we had not talked since he called two years before asking about his things. Here is the story that ran on the front page of the Sunday edition of The Detroit News and Free Press on Labor Day weekend 2003:
The Detroit News
Dedication, pride mark 83-year-old's love of the job
Ford worker reflects America's work ethic
By Mark Truby / The Detroit News
DEARBORN -- On Oct. 13, 1939, William Flournoy stood at the roiling cradle of the American auto industry, clutching a letter of recommendation from Cass Technical High School.
Thousands of men were lined up to apply for jobs at Ford Motor Co.'s massive River Rouge industrial complex near the end of the Great Depression. Flournoy looked like a longshot -- a 19-year-old black man with aspirations of becoming a master tool and die maker.
Upon reaching the employment office, two burly men grabbed the young man by an arm and whisked him over to a supervisor. Blacks, he was told, work in the production foundry, a hellishly hot and dirty factory where workers stirred molten steel with 20-foot rods.
"So do you want a job or don't you?" the supervisor asked.
Flournoy screwed up his courage and showed up at the foundry the next day determined to work his way to a better job and a better life. He did both. And he has never stopped. For 64 years, Flournoy has worked continuously at the Rouge complex, save for a two-year naval tour during World War II.
Today, at a wizened and slightly stooped 83 years old, he supervises a maintenance and cleanup crew at the Rouge complex. Flournoy achieved many of his dreams; a few slipped away. But in his sheer persistence, he quietly personifies the stubborn work ethic this region celebrates each year on Labor Day.
"When I came here I promised to work," Flournoy said. "So that's what I did. And whatever I did, I did to the very best of my ability. That's it. That's the end of the story."
Flournoy's story is more colorful than he would have others believe. In a career that spanned more than six decades, he not only overcame discrimination, as did many other factory workers of his time, but eventually crashed through the glass ceiling into management. While his co-workers retired one by one, he continued to work -- day after day, year after year.
For perspective, consider that Flournoy started his career while Henry Ford was still overseeing the company he founded in 1903. Today, Henry Ford's great-grandson, Bill Ford Jr., is the company's chairman and CEO.
Under Ford policies, Flournoy could have retired with full pension benefits 34 years ago. His son, William Flournoy Jr., recently reached his 30-year anniversary with Ford and is eligible for retirement.
Until recently, few of Flournoy's co-workers at the Rouge's Dearborn Diversified Manufacturing Plant knew the breadth of his history with Ford. That began to change two years ago, when he was recognized in an employee newsletter. And earlier this year, Bill Ford called him to the stage and led a standing ovation. Flournoy, though, downplays his incredible longevity and newfound celebrity status at work with a cranky tone that says, "Of course I am still working. Why shouldn't I be?"
But as he recounted his odyssey recently, digging through a box filled with letters of commendation from Henry Ford II and his old slide rule, Flournoy's eyes lit up and the excitement returned to his voice.
'Why should I retire?'
"I didn't come here to set a record for working the longest," he said. "I just enjoyed what I did. I have never stopped enjoying what I do, so why should I retire?"
It began in the production foundry. With thick dust and hot blasts of air, it felt like working in a sandstorm. Outside the plant, another kind of storm was brewing. The United Auto Workers' effort to organize the Rouge plant led to bloody wars with Ford enforcers.
Many black workers were used as strikebreakers. Flournoy wasn't interested in taking sides. After being trapped inside the factory during one intense period of the conflict in 1941, he scaled a fence to get home to his family.
During World War II, Flournoy spent two years in Guam as a Navy machinist. Afterward, he returned to the Rouge determined to escape the foundry and become a tool and die maker. He worked during the day and attended machinist school in the evenings. One day, the plant manager called him and delivered the news: He had been promoted to tool and die maker.
Determined not to blow his opportunity, Flournoy studied tool and die making with near religious zeal. He bought every book on the trade he could find, read them aloud into a tape recorder and played the tapes back to himself over and over. He soon was certified to perform seven types of jobs and was named leader of a group of die makers.
"My attitude was to try to improve everything we did," he said. "And once I improved it, I would try to perfect it. That's how I thought I could be the best."
Asking for promotion
For a few months, Flournoy worked 10-hour shifts at the Rouge, jumped in his car and rushed to Piquette Avenue to work another eight-hour shift at General Motors. The extra money allowed him to purchase a house in the upscale Jewish enclave of Russell Park. In the 1960s, Flournoy began writing letters to Henry Ford II, asking for a promotion into management. With each letter, he detailed his accomplishments and qualifications. To his surprise, Ford wrote back and told him he would be promoted. But a problem flared up: The manager of the tool and die plant threatened to quit if a black man was made a white-collar supervisor. Ford compromised by making Flournoy a manager at the Rouge's frame plant, a move that meant saying goodbye to the tool and die factory.
"We all had a great deal of pride when he became a manager," said Flournoy's son Christopher, a district manager at H&R Block. "We would watch him get ready. He put on a freshly pressed white shirt. He wanted to look the part. Heaven forbid there was any stray wrinkles."
A few years later, Flournoy was promoted again at the frame plant, now called Dearborn Diversified Manufacturing Plant. During the 1980s, he was in line to become a plant superintendent, but severe cutbacks at Ford killed his chances for advancement. His final assignment, as supervisor of a cleanup crew, held none of the allure of the tool and die trade, but Flournoy poured himself into the job.
"Even as a cleanup person I tried to be the best I could be," Flournoy said. "I could have retired, sure, but I still liked what I was doing. Some of the jobs you do are almost impossible, but the impossible just takes a little bit more time."
Each day, clipboard in hand, he walks the factory, directing his crew with the same serious-minded focus he has brought into the Rouge for nearly 64 years. "He's a relic around here, but he's still pretty nimble," said Salvatore Fenech, a 39-year Ford veteran who has known Flournoy for years.
For Flournoy, the end may be finally in sight. Though he's divorced from his second wife, he says he would like to spend more time with his five children and grandchildren. So this year, he says, may be his last. His family will have to see it to believe it.
"He had to fight so hard for his job, and that just made him love it even more," Christopher Flournoy said. "He has always said, 'I want to leave work for the last time being carried out.' If that's what he wants, he should have it."
What an awesome article about an awesome man!
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