A Personal History of the General Motors Terex Division

From Ed -- 

John, I may or may not have told you my wife's connection to General Motors but her father was a union machinist at the Terex Division of GM (until it was sold off in the 1980s).   Hudson is not far from Oberlin as you may know and both are really beautiful old "Western Reserve" towns.

 Terex built the huge land movers and other heavy equipment.  But Mr. Guenther was the essence of the American Dream: He grew up in a poor German family in northern Wisconsin, barely got through high school, joined the Army in WWII and because he could speak fluent "German German" was assigned as an MP transporting captured German military officers around the US to prisoner of war camps.  

At the end of the war he met my late mother-in-law who had been an Army nurse.  She, of course, was the daughter of the German from northeastern Ohio who had distributed Nazi propaganda around the Youngstown area and was "visited" by the FBI.  The late father-in-law got a good education in a machinist school in Chicago courtesy of the GI Bill and the late mother-in-law got a master's degree in nursing from the University of Chicago also courtesy of the GI Bill.  

The American Dream come true.  Two poor folks entered the middle class and put three kids through college.  And we inherited his machinist's tools!  Such stories are ones that made America!  

Mr. Guenther made a good living from General Motors but in the end he and others were told: "This is your last day.  We're selling the company."

A nice little history of Terex here:

https://www.terex.com/en/about/terex-history