I have been waiting to write this story until two of the main characters had died. It is important that people know how corporate culture can undermine public interest when there is no reason at all for doing so. The events I am going to describe caused me to leave General Motors for my job at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. To an outsider, my transition to academia looked smooth. Those knowing the full story witnessed a lot of ugliness, all of which should have been averted.
My unit at GM Research Labs was called the Transportation and Urban Analysis Department. We were fortunate to have working there an artist by the name of Ray Vogler. Among other talents, Ray was a wonderful cartoonist. Whenever anybody left the department in a somewhat normal fashion, Ray would draw a farewell cartoon. Usually, Ray would highlight some personal attribute, such as a passion or a hobby. For my farewell, Ray dangerously drew biting political satire. I kept the cartoon, but it remained hidden for more than a decade after leaving GM. I simply could not look at it. Now you will have the opportunity to see Ray’s brilliant cartoon, too.
This cartoon needs a lot of explaining. Here are some of the more obvious details. I am sitting on the chair; Dick Rothery is in the background; and standing just behind me is Bill Spreitzer. If you had ever done work in traffic flow theory, you probably have heard of Rothery. He co-authored a number of important papers on the subject of car-following theory with Robert Herman. Rothery was the assistant department head at the time of this cartoon. Spreitzer was the department head. You might notice that everyone in the department except me signed the card. Spreitzer simply initialed it, “WMS”, near my right knee. I can only imagine what he might have been thinking when he was asked to sign it. To me those initials were venomous.
Spreitzer’s and my paths crossed several times during the remainders of our careers. We were always cordial to one another. I got the impression that he never spoke ill of me. And I steered clear of speaking negatively of him. However, I suspect that he paid a high price within GM for the mistakes he made when dealing with the “cold start project” that I worked on. He likely had big regrets, although he never talked about them to me.
The “cold start project” took a huge emotional toll on me. Toward the end and in the aftermath, I stopped sleeping. I knew I needed to find another job, but I was too exhausted to look for one. Shirley led my job search efforts, and a supply of sleeping pills got me through the interviews Shirley arranged for me. Everything improved once we escaped Detroit. But what was the “cold start project” and why did it have the ability to turn my life upside down?
The story begins with Rothery wandering into my shared office one day.
Alan Horowitz, Whitefish Bay, October 13, 2019