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GM Parts Warehouse, ca. 1939

Late in 1939, having tired of ten years of "Depression" and the Dust Bowl of the Midwest, I took my last $50 and managed to get to Detroit through the assistance of a friend who was driving East to visit his mother. I had hopes of getting a job with an advertising company, designing newspaper ads. I visited all the great advertising firms of that day with no luck. In a little over a week my money was almost depleted and I spotted the GM Parts Division warehouse three blocks south of the GM Building. I had been a parts manager and general "flunky" at a small Oldsmobile dealership in Nebraska, so I stopped there and filled out a job application.

I went on the payroll as a laborer at 40 cents an hour (great pay at that time), and spent a few weeks bolting together steel parts bins. When most of the temporary force was laid off, I was kept on the payroll to unload boxcars. Over the next four years I held every hourly job available at that location.

In 1942, I enlisted in the Air Force Cadets and spent the next three years training as a navigator, and flying 35 bombing missions in a B-17 fortress. I was flying combat missions out of England, and participated in the D-Day invasion. After I finished combat flying I stayed in England another year, working as a combat crew briefing officer. I returned to the states in August, 1945 for a thirty day leave and with orders to go to the Pacific area after the leave. The war ended and I left the service in October, 1945.

I went back to GM and took a management training course. After about 9 months in Detroit, I got my first salaried position as Shipping Foreman in Cleveland, Ohio. After filling all the departmental foremen positions, I became manager of the operation in 1950. In 1954, I returned to Detroit as Warehouse Manager. In 1956, Chevrolet opened a new regional office in Cincinnati and I went there as Regional Warehouse Manager. When the Major Supply depot in St. Louis needed a new manager in 1961, I became the first field manager to get that position. In 1963, parts distribution became a division on its own and I became Area Director at Oakland, California for the area west of the Rockies. Reluctantly, I came back to the main office in Flint, in 1967 as Field Warehouse Director for the Western half. When times got tough in 1975, I volunteered to go back to California to my previous job in Oakland. I spent four more years there and retired to San Diego in 1979.

I am now approaching 92 years of age and always tell people that if I had thought I'd live this long I wouldn't have retired so soon. My wife and I became deeply involved in family research, traveled extensively in Europe, visited our children in California, Michigan, and Ohio, accepted many jobs in our church, and can honestly say that never in my 29 years of retirement have I gotten up wondering "What will I do today?" My advice to all retirees is "keep busy."

John D. Bentz

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