CHARLES JORDAN, FUHS '45

From Don Sorsabal:

I just got this information from Bob Nevil so thought it best to pass it on to our classmates. Hope all of you have a great holiday season.
Don Sorsabal, Class of ’45 Rep

Hi Don.
Reading the Union Tribune this am I ran across an obit that was for Charlie. He died of lymphoma, I forget the exact date. He lived in Rancho Santa Fe, a very exclusive area in San Diego Co. Phil Mikelson lives there. The obit listed some of his accomplishments with G.M. Cad designs including those tail fins of the '50s-60s. They might also have it in the L.A. Times up there. Anyway, I thought you might want to know. Look forward to seeing you at the PowWow in March. HAPPY HOLIDAYS to you & yours.
Bob Nevil

(From Connie:
Don Sorsabal e-mailed me that Chuck died on December 9, 2010. I replied that Charlie had a reservation for the Pow Wow luncheon last March and that I hoped that he and his wife had been able to attend and have one last visit with his friends. Don e-mailed me back and said that they hadn't made it.)

Dick Pond sent the following information:
Hi Connie,

Hope my attachment will help. The only thing missing in it that I got Off a General Moters site was
his birth date (10/21/1927).  (Below is the information in Dick's attachment.)

GM chief scored with iconic Cadillac fins
LOS ANGELES Charles M. "Chuck" Jordan, a former General Motors vice president of design whose early successes as a chief designer included the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado, a space-age icon with enormous tail fins, has died. He was 83.
Mr. Jordan died of lymphoma Dec. 9 at his home in Rancho Santa Fe in San Diego County, said his wife, Sally.
In his 43-year career at General Motors, Mr. Jordan was involved in designing vehicles such as the 1958 Chevy Corvette and the 1968 Opel GT. In 1986, he became the fourth man in GM history to be named vice president of design.
When he retired as design chief in 1992, one design staffer reportedly called Mr. Jordan "the last of the great design dinosaurs."
"He was a strong creative force at GM design, and a passionate leader," Ed Welburn, GM vice president of global design, said in a statement.
"It always felt as if every new project he was leading represented a new mountain to climb and was a fresh opportunity to create new trends and statements in automotive design," Welburn said. "He had the charisma and passion of few others in the industry."
A native of Whittier, Calif., near Los Angeles, Mr. Jordan launched his career in 1949 as a junior engineer in GM's design division after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In the 1950s, he moved to the advanced design studio, where he designed noteworthy dream cars for GM's "Motorama" concept showcase, including the 1955 Cameo truck and the 1956 Buick Centurian. He also was instrumental in the design of the XP-700 "Phantom" Corvette concept.
In 1957, the 30-year-old Mr. Jordan, at age 30, assumed the prestigious position of chief designer for Cadillac.
Mr. Jordan, who appeared in the 1996 PBS documentary "America on Wheels," noted in an interview with the Los Angeles Times before the documentary aired that contemporary vehicles lacked the personality of cars in the 1950s.
"People back then were more conscious of cars," he said. "With the new generation, their cars are not as passionate a thing as they were back then. Now, people want minivans. They are driving a lot of trucks. In those days, people were expecting some fabulous cars."
Fins at their extreme
Mr. Jordan once likened the 1959 Cadillac Eldorado's enormous pointed fins to "letting a tiger out of a cage saying 'go!'x"
"The original Cadillac fin was higher than the roof of the car on the coupe," he recalled with a laugh in the Times interview. "But even before the '59 hit the street, we had already completed the '60 design where we cut the fins off. That tells you we recognized that we probably overcooked it.
"But people loved that car. I think they probably love it more today because it was a reflection of that culture back in those days."
In 1962, the year Mr. Jordan was named executive in charge of automotive design, with responsibility for the exteriors of all GM cars and trucks, Life magazine named him one of the 100 most important young men and women in the nation.
Mr. Jordan's positions during his rise through the design ranks included a 1967-70 stint as design director for GM's Opel subsidiary in what was then West Germany. In 1977, he was named director of design for the entire GM design staff.
Mr. Jordan's "impact on the world of automotive design," AutoWeek writer Wes Raynal wrote at the time of Mr. Jordan's retirement in 1992, "is likely to be debated for decades to come."
"For some, he will be remembered best for cars early in his career, most notably the '59 Cadillac," Raynal wrote. "To others, successes like the Pontiac Bonneville and Cadillac Seville. To his critics, the poor-selling Chevrolet Caprice and APV minivans."
Although sensitive to the criticism, Mr. Jordan stressed that there are no hard-and-fast rules in his profession.
"We deal with design, an intangible and emotional subject," he told AutoWeek. "There are no rules or steps to success. It's a matter of opinion. This isn't research or engineering with computer programs and hard data. Words may not communicate it exactly.
"You gotta "You've got to see it and feel it. We deal with emotion."
Won competition at 19
The son of a citrus rancher, Mr. Jordan was born in Whittier on Oct. 21, 1927. He developed an early interest in drawing cars, and his grandmother is said to have supplied him with paper and a pencil during church services so he could sketch on his hymnal.
Mr. Jordan, who began driving pickup trucks in his father's orchards at 11 and bagged groceries at Richard Nixon's family's store while in high school, was a 19-year-old sophomore at MIT when his mother encouraged him to enter the national Fisher Body Craftsman's Guild automobile model design competition sponsored by the Fisher Body Division of GM.
He spent 700 hours on his winning project, which earned him $4,000 and a trip to Detroit.
"I'd always planned on working at Ford," Mr. Jordan, whose childhood hero had been Henry Ford, said in an interview with Newsmakers, a biographical reference source. "If I hadn't won that contest, that's where I'd be."
After retiring from GM, Mr. Jordan volunteered to teach an automotive design class at Valhalla High School in El Cajon and later at La Costa Canyon High School, both in the San Diego area.
"I've done what I'm going to do, and it's a matter of record," he told Automotive News in 2001. "Now I enjoy and want to work with young people. Promoting their creativity and exposing them to the opportunity design offers is very satisfying."
In addition to his wife of 58 years, Jordan is survived by his children, Debra Bryan, Melissa Hall, and Mark Jordan; his sister, Ruth Keneley; his brothers, John and Stan; and four grandsons.

Published in The Record and Herald News on December 20, 2010
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/northjersey/obituary.aspx?page=lifestory&pid=147320210
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Robert Nevill sent me (Connie) a picture of an article in the San Diego newspaper about Chuck's death. The picture is too big to upload to this blog. If you want me to e-mail it to you, e-mail me at CVANHORN@PACBELL.NET and tell me that it's in my inbox dated 12/22/2010 at 4:03. (This is the one that is rotated so that one can read it.)

In an e-mail message that George Gray gave me permission to upload:
Chuck lived in East Whittier as did I. We exchanged letters during his career. Three things stand out in my memory re. him. One was that all during high school he favored Ford and his car at that time was a green Ford convertable. Two- He lived in Los Angeles County ,as did I. I think he went to FUHS because his neighbors the Milhouse boys went to Fullerton. Third His son felt that GM was not keeping up to the market so he left them and went to work for Mazda? where he was the major designer for the Mazda Miata


I have several items on his history. He was a Quaker in his early days..

George E Gray, FUHS class of "45.