Ray Smith:  

Life is great! We live in Brentwood, TN which is just south of Nashville. Ford Motor Company Glass Division transferred us here 28 years ago. My wife Nellie and I have been married 45 years. Our family includes son Chris (37), his wife Whitney, their daughter Maggie (age 4), son Brett (31), and his wife Michelle. They all live in Middle Tennessee. My last two years of high school and beyond included playing drums with two local rock bands, working as an hourly assembly line worker at GM Hydramatic Transmission Plant in Ypsilanti, attending Henry Ford Community College for a year while working part-time, and generally having fun! My especially memorable experiences from this time period were my frequent visits to the Grande Ballroom and Spring Break 1969 at Daytona Beach, FL. In May 1969, I enlisted in the U. S.Air Force where my four years as an airborne radar equipment repairman included 11 months of electronic technical school at Biloxi, MS (where Hurricane Camille struck while I was there in Aug 1969); assignment to Sacramento, CA (where I met and married my wife in 1971); and overseas service in Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. It was during my time in Sacramento that I became deeply engrossed in auto mechanics and hot rodding which "triggered" my goal of becoming an automotive engineer! After discharge from the Air Force, I returned to HFCC for a year, transferred to UM-Dearborn, and earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering. My engineering career started at Masco Corporation in Taylor (the Delta Faucet company) where I had interned during college. I started to work with Ford Motor Company Dearborn Glass Plant in 1977 and launched a 24-year manufacturing and engineering career in the automotive glass industry with Ford Glass Division, Safelite Auto Glass, Hordis Brothers, and back to Ford. We moved to Tu...Expand for more