Book Description

This is my story. This is about my life. I was with Ford for thirty-nine years. Projects. Process. Products. People and pizza! There, those keywords capture the journey of thirty-nine years. My grandfather, Dr. Minahshi Sundaram, was a retired state assistant director of Public Heath, Madras (now Tamil Nadu), India. He would have been proud of me. He was one of the earliest Ford Model T owners in the city of Madras (now Chennai). We used to have fun starting the car using the iron rod in the shape of a T, inserting in the crankshaft from the front and rotating it round and round with force till the car started! Actually, my favorite car color is black. Many have been influenced by the well-known quote of Henry Ford, the founder, "Any color is all right, as long as it is black!" Also, I have bought only Ford cars during the last forty years from the same dealer Gene Butman Ford in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Mike Pluta has been our sales person for several years. Everybody there knows me and stops by to chat, including Mr. Butman himself and his two sons when my car is in the service shop. I became a founding member of the Ford Running Club (still very active), along with four others, and we would participate in Ford Corporate Cup annual event. Ford team has won the championship many times. It was a wonderful way to meet fellow ford engineers-men and women-in a social setting. Summer 2017, I won the 5K for men 70-74. It was a part of the annual corporate cup held in Belle Isle, Detroit. I have done that several times before. Ford won the cup again; but next day, they updated results, showing we finished as a runner-up, missing by a whisker. In 1980, I joined the Washtenaw Toastmasters (WTM) in my home, Ann Arbor. A member of the Toastmasters International, an organization to develop leadership in people through communication skills. Later, I started a toastmaster's club at Ford called, the Ford Accelerators. We used to meet at lunch time in the Build 5 conference room, facing the circle between Buildings 5 and 3 in Dearborn, along Rotunda Drive Even though I am retired from Ford, I am still an active participant in both Ford Running Club and WTM in my home, Ann Arbor.