Life has been a great ride for this Virginia Tech alumnus
Leo Walsh ’56 graduated from Virginia Tech with an engineering degree and then worked on several notable projects for Chrysler, including being part of a team of engineers who helped design what eventually became the automobile industry’s first minivan.
Fifty years ago, cars such as wood-paneled station wagons or full-sized step vans regularly carried families or groups on road trips across America’s highways.
But R.S. Bright, an executive vice president of product development for Chrysler, sought an alternative mode of transportation, one with the ease of entry of a station wagon and the flexibility of a truck-based van.
“His idea combined those two features,” Virginia Tech alumnus Leo Walsh said. “And he wanted it to fit in a garage. There were vans back then, but he wanted a ‘garageable’ van.”
At the time, Walsh ’56, who graduated from Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering with an engineering degree, had never visited a corporate vice president’s office in his 17 years at Chrysler, but he listened to Bright’s idea. Then he and a team of Chrysler engineers jump-started that idea into existence.
Walsh will be 95 in early April, but still remembers the details for a vehicle that eventually became known as the “minivan” and revolutionized the automobile market.
“Mr. Bright told me what he’d like to have, and I called the team together and said, ‘Look, here’s what he’d like to do,’” Walsh said recently via phone from The Chesapeake, a senior living community in Newport News. “I described everything, and two weeks later, they brought me a design. I looked at it, and I said, ‘Hey, that’s just what he wants.’”
This took place in 1974, but unfortunately, the garageable van wasn’t destined for the fast lane, at least not from a production standpoint. Bright loved the design and told Walsh to pitch the idea to Chrysler’s truck division, but Walsh’s presentation fell flat.
“They thought it was nothing more than a toy,” Walsh said.
Bright had Walsh’s team build a full-scale wooden model, which was unheard of at the time, according to Walsh. Bright retired four months before the completion of the model, though, and the model ultimately sat in storage for the next four years.
In 1977, Hal Sperlich, a former Ford executive, joined Chrysler as executive vice president for product development. Sperlich had long been an advocate of a garageable van, but couldn’t convince Ford’s management. His position at Chrysler allowed him to explore new innovations.
In 1978, another former Ford executive, Lee Iacocca, steered Chrysler’s fortunes in a different direction when he took over as company president. According to Walsh, Sperlich set up a meeting between Walsh and Iacocca on Iacocca’s first day to look at the wooden model.
“He [Iacocca] started asking me the questions,” Walsh said. “We got finished, and he said, ‘You know what? We can’t afford that vehicle now, but I want Chrysler engineers to build a prototype.’”
Over the next two years, Iacocca reorganized Chrysler into a more profitable operation, starting with the production of the “K-car” – the first front-wheel drive vehicle. The K-car served the starting point for what became known as the minivan.
In 1983, Chrysler started production of the minivan, and a year later, it became available to consumers. As a perk of the job, Walsh often brought home different vehicles, and one of his three children, David, remembers when his father brought home a minivan for the first time.
“He brought home all sorts of other things,” David Walsh said. “So we got to see the periphery of what he was doing. And we knew a little bit about the minivan, but when he actually brought the first one home, it was like, ‘Oh, this is what you’re talking about.’ … There was a great deal pride on our part knowing that our dad was part of that process.”
Walsh stayed at Chrysler for three more years before retiring in 1988. The retirement capped a career that started in somewhat of an unorthodox manner.
After his graduation from high school in his native Portsmouth in 1947, Walsh wasn’t thinking much beyond a week at the beach. But his mother dashed those plans, allotting him a long weekend instead and telling him to report to work at the railroad the following Monday. She had somehow managed – unbeknownst to him – to get him a job.
Walsh, who was in a reserve unit of the Marine Corps, worked for the railroad for three years before his reserve unit was called to active duty in 1950 because of the Korean conflict. He served on active duty for three years before returning to the railroad, where he worked for just three months.
At that point, six years after his high school graduation, Walsh decided to enroll at Virginia Tech.
“I finally decided that maybe I ought to take advantage of the GI Bill," a program that helps veterans pay for education, Walsh said. “My younger brother and I took remedial courses that summer and then went in as freshmen in September 1953.”
Walsh and his future roommate, an Army veteran from Suffolk with a similar background and of a similar age, graduated in 27 months, both with engineering degrees – an unheard timeframe even in those days. After graduation, Walsh mulled offers from U.S. Steel, Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler, and chose Chrysler. He then spent the next three decades at the company’s Michigan-based headquarters, eventually rising to the role of director of vehicle engineering.
Walsh and his first wife, who passed away in 2013, settled in Williamsburg after his retirement. Their three children live in different parts of the country today, and he lives in a senior living community with his current wife, Madalene.
Walsh’s original path to Virginia Tech may have been unorthodox, even for those days, but it certainly fueled a great career with Chrysler.
“I never regretted going with Chrysler Corporation one day,” Walsh said. “I had a career that I loved. I loved all the people. … I feel very, very fortunate.”
