Philip Caldwell

Mr. Caldwell studied economics at Muskingum College (now Muskingum University) and graduated in 1940. He was completing an M.B.A. at Harvard when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, prompting him to enlist in the Navy and serve as a lieutenant in the Pacific. When the war ended in 1945, he stayed with the Navy in a civilian job as a procurement manager and married Betsey Chinn Clark. She and their three children, Lawrence, Lucy H. Caldwell-Stair and Désirée C. Armitage, survive him, as do six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Mr. Caldwell spent a total of 37 years at Ford. By the 1970s, Mr. Caldwell was one of Henry Ford II’s most loyal and trusted lieutenants. Outsiders were stunned when Mr. Ford dismissed Mr. Iacocca in 1977 and elevated Mr. Caldwell instead, first to vice chairman and later to chief executive and chairman. In interviews around the time of his retirement as chief executive in February 1985, Mr. Caldwell insisted that Mr. Ford had never tried to interfere or tell him how to run the company. His retirement was an active one. He remained on Ford’s board for five more years after stepping down as chief executive a few days past his 65th birthday. He also worked in investment banking as a managing director at Shearson Lehman Brothers, joined the Council on Foreign Relations and served on the boards of a number of public companies as well as the executive recruitment firm Russell Reynolds Associates.