As Ford Motor Co. celebrates its 120th anniversary, the automaker honors the families that devoted much of their lives to helping the company succeed.
Ford will illuminate its world headquarters in Dearborn on Thursday and Friday to mark the occasion.
On June 16, 1903, Henry Ford and 12 associates invested $28,000 to create the automaker. The first Ford Model A, built at a plant on Mack Avenue in Detroit, would be listed for sale for $850 the following month and sold to a Chicago dentist, according to Ford.
The company’s birth year is shared with other historical markers: The debut of the Western “The Great Train Robbery,” a 12-minute-long narrative film that depicted continuity of action, produced by Thomas Edison. And Orville Wright took flight at 120 feet for 12 seconds that year, too, according to the Library of Congress.
But away from the headlines, Ford began changing the face of Detroit.
The company recruited factory workers from around the world. And those families, and thousands of others who joined the assembly line, remain connected to the automaker even today. Perhaps it’s why Ford, still controlled by the family, is often referred to as simply “Ford’s” by old-timers.
These are the stories of families whose lives were impacted directly by Henry Ford.
Raed El Khalil: ‘The ultimate dream’
While Raed El Khalil, 48, of Dearborn, joined Ford in September 2022, his great-grandfather Ali Otta arrived in the earliest days of Ford from a part of the world now known as Lebanon. Ford had sent boats to the Middle East asking if anyone wanted to work in Detroit, the automaker confirmed.
“Back then, it was Mount Lebanon. People were very poor,” El Khalil told the Free Press. “Any chance you got to leave the country, you were taking that chance. My great-grandfather was illiterate.”
An impoverished Otta immigrated through New York and worked at Ford for about two decades. Otta fled religious persecution as a Shiite Muslim during the Ottoman Empire. He sent money back to his family. He wrote letters about working in a factory building cars, El Khalil said.
“Ford was always the ultimate dream for me,” said El Khalil, an industrial engineering manager who has worked at Toyota in Japan, Nissan in Japan, Fiat in Italy, Peugot in France and Chrysler in Warren, Sterling Heights and Detroit.
He is also an associate engineering and management professor who has taught at Lebanese American University in Beirut in the past, and online classes now at Adrian College and the University of Michigan.
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El Khalil, a manufacturing specialist, helps Ford improve costs and quality and productivity. He assesses line speeds and ensures departments have the workers needed. He creates work instructions for each role on the line, understanding it’s where his great-grandfather began.
“You’d mention the name ‘Ford’ to my grandfather, and it was something that gave them a life, an opportunity,” El Khalil said. “For my family, it represented hope.”
Roderick ‘Treetop’ Williams: ‘A decent life’
You’ll find Roderick “Treetop” Williams, 70, of Westland, at the Dearborn Truck Plant working on the F-150 pickup trucks, inspecting body quality before vehicles head to the paint shop.
His father, who worked at Ford for 44 years, insisted that Williams work at Ford immediately after high school. His sister, Tonya Williams, has worked in the body shop nearly four decades.
“I didn’t want to come out here, to be honest with you,” Williams told the Free Press. “But my father said he wasn’t raising no bums. He told me that … he had plans for me. He knew, working at Ford, I would have at least a decent life to survive in this world. Ford gave me a way of living.”
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He added, “I’ve been in the Rouge complex all my existence. When I first started out, I didn’t care for it. The work was hard. When I got out there in 1970, I was making $2.65 an hour. I was only bringing home $134 a week. It wasn’t no big amount of money. At the time I got hired in, that was a lot of money for me. A loaf of bread wasn’t that much. Ford gave me a life that endured through time.”
Soon, Williams will retire, he said. “I do my job. I get up at 3:55 and start work at 5:30 a.m. I believe it is time for me to go. I’m just grateful of the fact that I was able to endure, to enjoy what I’m doing coming in every day.”
Kayla Staley: ‘So grateful’
Kayla Staley, 33, of Ida Township, never thought she’d work at Ford, even though her father, Chuck Staley, has spent decades as an electrician, first in Ypsilanti and now at Dearborn Truck. She is currently on the midnight shift, working 11 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. at the Woodhaven Stamping Plant.
The former Buffalo Wild Wings waitress considered nursing. But she decided to try working at Ford, and began a decade ago in production. Now she’s a second-year machine repair apprentice. She attends Monroe Community College, and that includes classes such as welding, all paid for by a UAW-Ford collaboration.
“I was a single parent. And working every weekend, every holiday, and I didn’t have insurance or retirement,” said Staley, a mother of two daughters. “My dad and my grandparents, they built really good lives through manufacturing. My dad took us everywhere. He was very involved in our lives. And I wanted that for my daughters.”
Her great-grandmother worked in production at Rawsonville Assembly after becoming widowed with three young children. Her grandfather, Charles Staley Sr., retired from the Saline plant as a production cleaner. Her grandmother worked in assembly at General Motors. Her brother, Charlie, is an electrician at Ford’s Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne.
“My dad, he really set me up to be successful at Ford,” Staley said. “I understand benefits I receive now that they did not have when he was starting out almost 30 years ago. For instance, as an apprentice, Ford and the UAW negotiated for apprentices to have their tools bought for them. It is very expensive to get started in any apprenticeship buying your tools. That would deter a lot of people from even pursuing an apprenticeship, if you have to buy $10,000 worth of tools just to get started, They told me to go pick up my toolbox and I was so grateful that was a benefit that had been negotiated for us.”
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She’s refurbishing a 101-year-old farmhouse now and planning her wedding.
“Going into factory work, I wasn’t excited. I was very nervous about everything I did,” Staley said. “It’s really built my confidence in myself at work, and at home, as a woman, really.”
Chad Mosher: ‘Honored’
Chad Mosher, 41, of Crown Point, Indiana, is a Monroe native who has worked at Monroe stamping, Woodhaven Stamping, Flat Rock Assembly and now Chicago Assembly as an operations manager. Soon, he’ll become a materials, planning and logistics manager at BlueOval City in Tennessee in July, handling all inbound freight and parts, as well as finished electric vehicles.
He’s carrying on a long legacy: His brother, mother, father, grandmother, grandfather and great-grandfather all worked in production at Ford and eventually retired after decades apiece. His mom worked midnights. His dad would stagger scheduling to get kids to sports practice.
“They worked overtime lots of hours,” Mosher said. “It’s something I looked up to, through my childhood, seeing how hard of workers they were. That’s what they raised me to be.”
And now he’s taking Ford into the future with the first factory the company has built in more than half a century.
“It’s like the next generation of Ford Motor Co. It’s the way of the future. I’m really happy and honored,” Mosher said. “Everybody in the family has been an hourly employee up until me. I truly define it as a ‘Ford family.’ I’m very, very grateful.”
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Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @phoebesaid.