Executive's suicide gives a voice to depression

Successful businessman Heinz Prechter kept his condition secret from most people. His death has raised awareness of the illness.

©New York Times

© St. Petersburg Times,
published July 29, 2001

DETROIT -- Gleaming in the summer sunshine, a long line of black limousines, Town Cars and sport utility vehicles ferried dignitaries recently to the Grosse Ile Presbyterian Church on a residential island just south of Detroit.

Among the passengers were Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham; Commerce Secretary Donald Evans; President Bush's top adviser, Karl Rove; Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer; and dozens of top corporate executives.

It was just the kind of event that Heinz Prechter, chairman of ASC Inc., would have enjoyed, darting about to greet friends in his German-accented English, shaking hands and patting shoulders. Instead, the throng of 700 had gathered for Prechter's funeral, held five days after he committed suicide July 6 at age 59.

The news was a jolt to Detroit's business leaders, who knew Prechter as an ebullient German immigrant who had arrived in the United States with $11 in his pocket and made a fortune in the auto business. Even more shocking was the cause. For years, Prechter had been under treatment for severe depression.

His condition was a secret to all but his family and some close friends. Publicly, Prechter displayed a carefree persona as a political fundraiser and sole owner of a privately held company with $550-million in revenues that perfected the sunroof and helped develop specialty cars such as the Dodge Viper.

His secrecy was not surprising. "There is still this enormous embarrassment in America about having some mental health problem," said Ronald Kessler, professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. "The workplace is the last bastion" of secrecy.

Prechter certainly was not alone among business and political leaders who have faced depression. Ted Turner was treated for manic-depression in 1985 and took lithium for years. And George Stephanopoulos, the former aide to President Bill Clinton, has openly discussed his treatment.

The stigma may have been greater a generation ago, when Sen. Thomas Eagleton was forced to step aside as the Democratic vice presidential candidate after acknowledging that he had undergone electroshock treatments for depression. And in 1963, Philip Graham, the chairman of the Washington Post Co., committed suicide after struggling with depression.

Even those who knew that Prechter was ill had been buoyed during his last weeks, when his joie de vivre, absent in recent months as he battled an injury, seemed to have returned. "I thought this time he had made it back," said Gov. John Engler of Michigan, who delivered a eulogy.

Prechter's death has already raised local consciousness. Calls to the University of Michigan's Depression Center, where Prechter received treatment, more than doubled in the three days after his death. And his depression was openly discussed throughout his 90-minute funeral. "We come here to acknowledge that emotional depression robs one of hope," the Rev. Karl Travis said in an opening prayer.

Nationally, clinical depression takes a nearly $44-billion annual toll in the workplace, according to the National Mental Health Association. At any time, one in 14 employees suffers from depression, with more than 200-million workdays lost each year. Symptoms range from low morale and fatigue to alcohol or drug abuse. About 12 percent of men and up to 25 percent of women suffer from depression during their lifetimes, the association said. While more women attempt suicide, men are more likely to be successful, doctors say.

Drs. Jeffrey Lyon Speller and Tanya Korkosz, who have studied depression in corporate settings, estimate that up to 10 percent of senior executives have at least some symptoms of manic-depression, yet nine out of 10 of them go undiagnosed and untreated.

Depression is widely misunderstood. This is certainly so in Detroit, where executives are expected to optimistically endure the slow business cycles that regularly plague auto companies. The prevailing attitude is "Keep a stiff upper lip, have a strong cocktail, and maybe it will go away," said Dr. Sheila Marcus, director of adult ambulatory psychiatry at the University of Michigan clinic.

Even Prechter's company, ASC, does not offer its employees treatment programs for depression. "I can tell you that will change," said David Treadwell, Prechter's successor as chairman.

During the public viewing of Prechter's body, attended by 3,000 mourners, several people told Treadwell, "I wish I could have talked to him; I could have snapped him out of this," he recalled. Robert Stempel, former chief executive of General Motors, who was on a business trip when Prechter died, said he did not believe a news report and called home to see if it was true. "How could I misread this guy?" he said.

It was an easy question to ask, for Prechter had an undeniable zeal for life. He was born in 1942, in Kleinhoebing, Germany, where his parents owned a farm. At 13, he worked as an apprentice, learning to make auto parts and car bodies. But instead of moving on to a German auto company or auto supplier, Prechter came to the United States in 1963 to study at San Francisco State College. Two years later, he founded the American Sunroof Corp., ASC's predecessor.

At the time, sunroofs were more common on European imports than on Detroit models. They were always installed after a car was assembled, and motorists might then have to contend with wind noise, leaks and ill-fitting glass. Prechter, starting with $764 in equipment, designed a sunroof that auto companies could easily install on the assembly line.

Moving his company from San Francisco to suburban Detroit, Prechter branched out into vehicle development. In 1980, when Stempel was in charge of GM's European operations, Prechter came to him with a proposal for a convertible version of the Opel Cavalier that would be lightweight and inexpensive to produce. Stempel was impressed, and the convertible joined GM's European lineup.

"He loved the auto business," Keith Crain, publisher of Automotive News, said in a eulogy. "It was big enough, and global enough, to match his energy."

He also loved rubbing shoulders with the powerful and the promising. Engler met Prechter in the early 1980s when he was still a state senator. Dieter Zetsche, Chrysler's chief executive, said Prechter tracked him down in 1992, just after Zetsche, then running Freightliner in Portland, Ore., was named chief engineer at Mercedes-Benz.

On his way back to Germany, Zetsche stopped in suburban Detroit to tour the new Chrysler Technology Center, where he received a phone call from Prechter inviting him to visit his suburban headquarters. Zetsche declined, as he was set to depart for Germany that afternoon. No problem: Prechter sent a car to ferry Zetsche to ASC's headquarters in Southgate, south of Detroit. Then he flew Zetsche on his private plane to New York, where he caught an evening flight to Germany.

The last time the two met, in late June, Zetsche said, Prechter was irritable. He complained about the side effects of medication he was taking to alleviate the pain of an injury -- his family would not say what kind -- suffered on an Alaska fishing trip last fall. Many people now speculate that the constant pain helped push him to suicide.

In fact, Treadwell said, for most of the past year Prechter was battling his third major bout with depression, following one in the late 1970s and a second in the early 1990s.

Though he continued to come to his office during the latest bout, Treadwell said, Prechter had lost interest in business and politics. He skipped February's Geneva Motor Show, the industry's most elegant annual event, where he was always a fixture. And when Bush visited Detroit earlier this year, Prechter was not on hand, although it had been at Prechter's sprawling Texas ranch that Republican strategists first introduced Bush to key corporate backers in 1996.

Recently, however, Treadwell saw hopeful signs. Prechter, who had said he was not interested in an ambassadorship, changed his mind.

In early June, Prechter told Treadwell that he had a new plan: He would remain at ASC for two years to shepherd some key projects, particularly the coming Chevrolet SSR sport truck. Then he would aim for a government post. Engler said Prechter also began pursuing the idea of establishing a global automotive center at the University of Michigan.

The euphoria was short-lived, as Prechter's listlessness returned. On July 5, his final day in the office, Prechter was "not good," Treadwell said. The last employee to see him leave, Treadwell said, was a security guard, who told Prechter: "Heinz, you look tired. You've got to go home." Prechter's wife found his body, clothed in robe and shoes, the next morning in a guest house on his estate. He had hanged himself.

In the weeks since Prechter's death, Marcus of the University of Michigan clinic said she was touched by how many Detroit-area executives confided to her that they or members of their families had encountered depression. Prechter's widow, Waltraud, and his children, 21-year-old twins, have pledged to back efforts to fight the illness.

"There's a certain closeness of the moment that allows people to begin talking more thoughtfully about what this event meant to them," Marcus said.

Treadwell said he is not concerned about ASC's survival. Prechter, after his previous bout with depression, reorganized management so the company could run without him. At the time, the move was meant to allow him to focus more on political fundraising and have the freedom to visit his Texas ranch.

Irreplaceable, however, are Prechter's political and business contacts. "Heinz had a way of saying, "I need a little help with this,' " Stempel said.

Named co-chairman of a Republican fundraising dinner in 1992, Prechter, who raised millions for the GOP, filled the National Building Museum in Washington to the rafters for an event that featured some powerful names. "There he sat, in his tuxedo, between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan," Engler marveled.

Republican officials sent flowers to his funeral; President Bush and his father sent letters of condolence. Engler later led a memorial service on Mackinac Island, where Republican governors had gathered.

Wiping away tears, Engler called Prechter "the quintessential American, a great American dreamer."

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