Page 89 - DeSales 19898

Famous Lehigh Valley Native Visits Allentown College

Lee Iacocca, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the
Chrysler Corporation, delivered the Fifth Annual Reverend
Thomas J. Furphy Memorial Lecture on March 23, 1988 in
Billera Hall. The focus of his lecture was current American
problems and American competitiveness.
After being referred to by Allentown College President
Father Daniel Gambet as “the Lehigh Valley’s most celebrated
native son,” Iacocca received a standing ovation from the
estimated crowd of 3,000 and began his problem/solution
discussion of contemporary American.
His seven point plan, which frequently alluded to the
Chrysler Corporation, consists of keeping in pace with
productivity rates, cutting the federal deficit, reducing the
trade deficit, reforming the just-reformed tax system, enacting
an energy policy, eliminating the corporate raiders, and
revitalizing the backward American education system.
Although Iacocca praised his own Allentown schooling, he
maintained that a large amount of American high school
graduates cannot “read, write, count, or compete. He
compared American education to the superior educational
systems of Europe and Japan.
Iacocca graduated from Lehigh University in 1945 with a
bachelor of science degree in industrial engineering and a
master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton
University in 1946. He worked with the Ford Motor Company
for thirty-two years before beginning his career as a highly
visible company growth campaigner for the Chrysler
Corporation in 1978.
He is active in a variety of charities and civic organizations
which include his serving as chairman of the committee for
Corporate Support of the Joslin Diabetes Foundation,
chairman of the Iacocca Foundation, chairman emeritus of the
Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, and the Governor of
Michigan’s Commission on Jobs and Economic Development.

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