Boy, did I get that story wrong.
Mary's husband did work for Ford as a design engineer. He was in charge of second shift. But the numbers Mary gave me may be incorrect, and I don't know how many he was in charge of.
Mary's son worked there as a design engineer also. Sometime during the recession of 2008, Ford laid off bunches of design engineers, including her son. Her husband had already passed away.
Her son went out to California to do contract design for an electric car company called Fisker, named after a famous car designer Henrik Fisker, who designed BMW Z8, Aston Martin DB9, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Fisker Karma, Galpin-Fisker Mustang Rocket, VLF Force 1 V10, VLF Destino V8, and later, other cars in his electric car line.
When Fisker ran into financial difficulties because of the failure of the battery supplier, Mary's son was laid off. Fortunately there was another electric car company there that was picking up momentum, Elon Musk's Tesla. He worked for Elon, but soon another company Germany offered him a job, and then a second company offered him his best offer, a company from Taiwan.
While working for the German company, they were all together at the Detroit Auto show when Henrik Fisker walked by their display. Her son turned to his German friends and asked, "Do you want to meet Henrik Fisker?" They were surprised that Don knew him personally.
While taking her son to the Detroit airport, her son was driving, telling this story to his mother and my wife, Mary. I was sitting in the back seat, and being hard of hearing, I jumped to the conclusion that they were talking about Elon Musk.
I have told this story wrong a multitude of times, out of my weakness, pride.
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