Innocent bears and idiot-Detroiters aside, I read an article on Henry J in a German newspaper on the weekend ("The man who saved Gibson") which shed a bit more light on him:
He was born 1953 in Argentina, son of a former Polish officer who had been a longtime POW in German WW II captivity (so that is why I never got that doubleneck ...
). The family moved to the US (Rochester, NY) subsequently (Henry had a brother too) and Henry became an (electronics) engineer with GM in Flint, MI, before eventually qualifying for a GM Harvard fellowship which would lead him into the investment banking world and there, more specifically, restructuring broke companies.
I didn't know he was a first generation immigrant. Nor that he had an engineering background. It probably explains a little bit how he ticks. The electronics background certainly lends some credibility to his enthusiasm for the Firebird X.
The article was also interesting for how Gibson became part of Norlin: Initially, Gibson sought the contact of Norlin as an industrial player to gain access to raw materials which were hard to come by as a guitar maker in WW II. Dependability on Norlin became such, they took Gibson over eventually.
