Up for auction a RARE! "Henry Ford II Whiz Kid" Arjay Miller Hand Signed 5.75X3.5 Card.  

ES-8391E

Arjay

Miller (March 4, 1916 –

November 3, 2017) was one of the ten Whiz Kids hired by Henry Ford II of the Ford Motor Company. He

served as president of Ford Motor Company between 1963 and 1968, until he was

abruptly fired by Henry Ford II. He then went on to become the dean of

the Stanford

Graduate School of Business. Rawley John Miller, Jr. was born on

March 4, 1916 to Rawley John Miller and Mary Gertrude Miller in Shelby, Nebraska. The youngest of eight children, he adopted

the name Arjay from his sister, who nicknamed him after the first and second

initials of his father, Rawley John. At the age of 16, he moved to

California. He graduated from University

of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a Bachelor of Science

degree in banking and finance in 1937. After UCLA, he enrolled as a

graduate student at University of California,

Berkeley in an economics program, but did not complete a

dissertation. He worked as an economist with the Federal

Reserve Bank of San Francisco before attempting to enlist in

the U.S. military for World War II and

getting rejected due to poor eyesight. He was later drafted to the U.S. Army Air Forces where

he taught pilots on a flight simulator. He enrolled in a statistical program

for officers at Harvard University and

joined the Army Air Forces's Office of Statistical Control where he worked with

others to track the logistics of air operations and training for the remainder

of the war. At

the rank of captain, Miller along with nine others from the Office of

Statistical Control, famously called the Whiz Kids, sought opportunities to get hired on as a

"package deal" to bring their logistics expertise to the public

sector. The group made an agreement with Henry Ford II, and were hired on to

the Ford Motor Company. Miller was hired in 1945 as part of the Ford finance

department's analysis unit. By January 1961, Miller was promoted to Vice

President for Finance. He was named President of Ford Motor Company in May

1963, succeeding John Dykstra. Along with fellow Whiz Kid, Robert S. McNamara, Miller

is remembered as helping Ford to add safety options to their automobiles in the

mid-1950s. During his time as President, Ford unveiled the Mustang and responded to the need for more automotive

safety features after Ralph Nader's 1965

book on the automotive industry's design flaws, Unsafe at Any Speed. After

the Detroit race riots of 1967,

Miller formed the Economic Development Corporation of Greater Detroit in 1968

and served as the chairman until June 1969. In 1968, Henry Ford II

abruptly named Semon Knudsen as

President and moved Miller to vice chairman, a role created for him. In 1969,

he left Ford's management team, though he stayed on Ford's board until 1986. On

July 1, 1969, Miller replaced Ernie Arbuckle as

dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He would remain as dean for

10 years, until retiring from the post in 1979. While dean, he is credited with

establishing Stanford's Public Management Program in 1971. Miller co-founded

the Public

Policy Institute of California with Bill Hewlett and Roger Heyns in 1994, served as the chair of the board of

directors from 1995 to 1998, and remained a member of the board until 2006. He

was also the founding chairman of the board and a life trustee of the Urban Institute. He was named an honorary trustee of

the Brookings Institution; and

a board member of the Mellon Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,

and SRI International. He also

served on the boards of a number of companies, including Wells Fargo, The Washington Post, Levi Strauss & Co., Utah International (mining company),

and Burlington Northern

Railroad.