William Clay Ford, Sr.



William Clay Ford, Sr. (born March 14, 1925) is the current owner of the NFL's Detroit Lions football franchise. He is the youngest of the four children of late former Ford Motors executive Edsel Ford and the youngest grandchild of Ford Motors founder Henry Ford.

Biography
Ford served in the U.S. Navy Air Corps during World War II. He married Martha Firestone, the granddaughter of Harvey Firestone and Idabelle Smith Firestone on June 21, 1947. They have four children - Martha, Sheila, Elizabeth, and William Clay Ford, Jr. Ford received a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Yale University in 1949 and was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity.

He worked for the Ford Motor Company and was briefly head of the Continental Division. This division was short lived, and was merged with Lincoln shortly before Ford's public stock offering. He updated the Continental that his father had created, and in 1955 the Continental Mark II was released. It is said there were only 2 pictures on the wall in his office at Ford HQ, his father's Continental, and his updated Mark II

In 1963, Ford purchased a controlling interest in the Detroit Lions of the National Football League from the previous owners D. Lyle Fife and Edwin Anderson for $4.5 million.

He was chairman of the most important of the directors' committees, the Finance Committee. He sat on the Ford Board of Directors for 57 years, retiring on May 12, 2005. His son, William Clay, Jr. was serving as Ford's CEO at the time.

According to the Forbes 400, he was the 283rd richest man in United States, with a net worth of over $1.2 billion, as of 2011.