1953

cole.christine@comcast.net

Stanley A. Seneker ’53, a former chief financial officer at Ford, died June 28, 2012 at his home in Naples, Fla. He was 81.

Seneker retired at the end of 1994 as executive vice president and chief financial officer, having held the latter position since 1987. He worked with two CEOs: Donald Petersen and Harold (Red) Poling. Seneker joined Ford in 1957 as a cost analyst at the company’s San Jose, Calif., assembly plant.

Before taking the CFO job, Seneker was executive vice president of Ford Motor Land Development and president of Ford Motor Credit.
 
Born in Bristol, Tenn., he grew up on a small farm. He later earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Santa Clara University, where he competed on the swim team, and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
 
"I didn’t necessarily want to make finance, as such, a career," he told journalist A. J. Davis of Harper’s magazine in 1988. "But I thought that finance was a place where one could quickly get an overview of what went on in a company."
 
Before retiring to Florida, Seneker lived in Bloomfield Hills. Outside of Ford, he served on the board of directors of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the United Way, Madonna University and the Archdiocese of Detroit.
 
He is survived by his wife, Marcy, and five children: Sarah, Mark, Stephen, Anne Dunlop and Michael; six brothers and sisters, and eight grandchildren.

08 Nov 2018