Mid-South News
(2009-06-10)
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Outside the Tanasi Clubhouse at Tellico Village, a summer storm is whipping the rain across the golf course. Inside, the place is packed mostly with golfers here to get in out of the rain. But the three white-haired gentlemen seated at the table across from me aren't thinking about golf at the moment. They're here to speak about the company to which they devoted much of their adult lives
"My name is Jim Gahrs. I have Thirty five years with General Motors, I retired as Director of Dealer Development for Pontiac-GMC Division." "My name is Ron Stanley and I spent 37 years with General Motors, retired as the Vehicle Planning Director in the Research and Planning Group." "I'm Dave Hudgens. I too had 35 years with General Motors, all of it in Public Relations, Communications and Media Relations."
Gahrs, Stanley and Hudgens are among the roughly 700 members of the G-M Club at Tellico Village. There's also a Ford Club and a Chrysler Club. So there's no shortage of people like Ron Stanley here people whose lives have been defined by the automobile industry
"You know I spent 37 plus years, my father spent 20 years with General Motors before I got there. I am General Motors and General Motors is me," Ron Stanley said.
These days, Stanley, Gahrs and Hudgens are living out their retirements 550 miles away from Detroit. But they're still finely tuned to the drama that has characterized the last couple years at G-M
"When you work for a big corporation, you give a part of yourself to that big company and part of the success of that big company is your success. So when that big company doesn't succeed, you personally don't succeed. It's like losing a family member," Ron Stanley said.
Jim Gahrs says twenty years ago you'd have to be crazy to suggest that G-M would ever file for bankruptcy
"I think I would try and have you committed. It would be the furthest thing from any reality that we could have thought of at that point. It's still a shock and a sad situation to have it happen," Jim Gahrs said.
But the shock and sadness runs deeper than just the bankruptcy. Stanley and Hudgens say they've had to watch the media and Congress ridicule and berate the company
"It seems like General Motors has always had a target on its back, especially with the media, that we're always the big guy, we're always the one they want to pick on," Ron Stanley said.
"They said, if you only built cars that people wanted to buy. Well the matter of fact is we were building trucks that people wanted to buy and we got criticized for that because they didn't get as good fuel economy. Well, we were building cars that people wanted," Dave Hudgens said.
Sales of G-M cars have dropped significantly in recent years. But don't blame the members of the G-M club. They remain as loyal to the product as ever
"I have a great love for General Motors. I did for all those years and I still do. I'd want to go out and shoot myself if I drove something other than a General Motors vehicle," Dave Hudgens said.
If they're committed to the company's past, the G-M retirees in Tellico Village are just as committed to its future as shaky as it might appear right now
"When they skinny down the product portfolio and we right-size the number of dealers, we're going to be in great shape," Dave Hudgens said. "What we're going to end up with here is going to be phenomenal. It is going to be phenomenal. It was a good organization to be part of and I'm still proud to be part of it. Most of us still bleed blue and have blue emblems on our P-J's and I'm very very optimistic about the new G-M," Ron Stanley said. © Copyright 2009, WKNO
