Biography | Mary Barra — The Waterford School That Sent an Engineer Into the Plants

People file the General Motors chief as a Detroit product who appeared fully formed in the Renaissance Center.

The first named school is on Scott Lake Road in Waterford Township.

Mary Teresa Makela was born on 24 December 1961.

CNN, Britannica, and CNBC list the birthplace as Waterford, Michigan.

Wikipedia gives Royal Oak instead.

The two towns sit a few miles apart in Oakland County, and the public record does not settle which building she was born in.

What does settle is where she was schooled.

She grew up in Waterford Township, the daughter of Ray Makela, a die maker in GM's Pontiac shops, and Eva Makela.

The Oakland Press, writing at her appointment, named Waterford Mott High School as the diploma.

The Waterford School District still claims the 1980 graduating class.

Charles S. Mott High School opened in 1967 at 1151 Scott Lake Road.

Laura Colby's 2015 biography Road to Power records that her class produced ten students with a 4.0 average, and that she was one of them.

That figure comes from one secondary book, not a district transcript, and should be read as reported rather than audited.

The private childhood house is not the pin.

This working public high school is.

From here she entered General Motors Institute in Flint on a co-op track and, in the summer of 1980, began inspecting stampings at Pontiac Motor Division.

A visitor finds a still-open campus, not a museum to one alumna.

The portrait attached is a 2014 United States government photograph, taken the year she became chief executive, not a yearbook page.

Photo: portrait, U.S. government, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.