Kettering University

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A retrospective: Major Albert Sobey and Kettering’s 90th Anniversary - Page 2

But other forces were at work. Albert’s quick mind had attracted attention. A teacher took an interest and tutored him in high school courses. When his mother remarried, her new husband, who had worked in mining management, loaned Albert money to attend college. And so Albert went to Michigan Agricultural College (MAC, now Michigan State University) in East Lansing. Albert, who had missed high school except for the tutoring, tested well enough for acceptance. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from MAC in 1909.

For several years after college, he worked as a civil engineer in Lansing and Chicago. When he became seriously ill in 1911, he came home. His stepsister was a nurse and helped in his recuperation. Before he fully recovered, his stepfather died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Realizing the need to help his mother again, he gave up plans to return to Chicago and instead found work teaching mathematics and physics at the Michigan College of Mines (now Michigan Technological University) in Houghton.

As a young teacher, Sobey learned how to handle students who were sometimes belligerent. Usually he was able to change their attitudes and often received their thanks after they left his class for teaching them discipline that helped them succeed. He also noted young single men in the Copper Country had little to do, so he organized baseball, hockey teams and discussion sessions. Sobey was learning he had a knack for teaching and for helping young people develop.

When World War I began, he joined the Army as a captain, assigned as assistant chief of the radio section of the Military Intelligence Division. He was 5-foot-8 ½ and so thin that the Army had to get a ruling that he was an expert “of importance to the war effort for which no other suitably qualified person is available.” Sobey could recount many war stories – including capturing German military messages while manning an overseas interception station at Houlton, Maine. By war’s end he was a major and chief of the Radio Military Intelligence Division. The Army wanted him to stay, but Sobey wanted out. 

It was 1919 and another boom was taking place – this one in the automotive industry. Thousands of people were moving to Flint to build Buicks in one of the world’s largest industrial complexes and to work in other local plants that produced Chevrolets, Dorts, trucks and auto components. Most were part of the General Motors empire. GM had become a gigantic economic engine and Flint was one of the most prosperous cities in the country.

Local GM leaders began to promote a plan to create a school under Flint’s Industrial Development League. The primary leader was Buick’s general manager, Harry Bassett.  Sobey agreed to start the school. The first class of the School of Automobile Trades started at 7 p.m. Oct. 20, 1919. Soon 500 students were taking courses in their spare time and the school developed quickly. Special courses were held for foremen in management and leadership skills. Company leaders including Kettering served as speakers or discussion leaders. In 1923 the school was renamed the Flint Institute of Technology. A program that covered major technical and business fields became the basis of the four-year cooperative engineering program in 1924 and the moment when cooperative education was born.

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