The name Edward Whitacre Jr. may not be familiar to many folks in Michigan, unless you work[[ed) for SBC or AT&T.

Ed Whitacre was the Chairman of SBC Corp., which was one of the 7 Baby Bells. Southwestern Bell Corp. was the original name back in 1984 at the breakup of AT&T into a new leaner AT&T and 7 regional Bell companies.

At some point they shortened it to SBC, and moved their HQ from St. Louis to San Antonio [[literally from the NE part of their home turf to the SW part of it).

In 1990 Ed Whitacre Jr. became SBC chairman, and started on an empire building program that nearly rebuilt the old AT&T [[the parent and 4 of 7 baby Bells).

In the 1990's he orchestrated the takeover of San Francisco based Pacific Telesis [[formerly PacBell), then came the takeover of Chicago based Ameritech in 1998 and a few years ago did a merger with Bell South.

Then came the takeover of parent AT&T with SBC using the AT&T Corporate name, but the new San Antonio based company is still basically Whitacre's.

Two years ago [[2007) he retired at the mandatory age of 65.

Besides what I have already mentioned, the only thing I know about this "empire builder" is that in 1998, after the takeover of Ameritech, he had a face-to-face meeting with then Michigan governor John Engler. From reports in the media, it was a rather combative meeting, that ended rather abruptly.

Besides that, I don't know much about Texan Edward Whitacre Jr.... the new Chairman of the Board of General Motors....