General Motors Executive (Hyatt Roller Bearing initially, GM ultimately); the company's first Vice President of Sales, Advertising and Public Relations (1923-1935), first Director of Customer Relations (1935-1937). Only person not on the GM Board of Directors issued original stock in the company when it was formed (2 May 1918).

Via telegram 23 July 1901, Ben Koether was a direct hire of Alfred P Sloan, having responded to a published newspaper classified ad seeking an accountant (which he wasn't). He was then an unmarried formally-uneducated butcher's apprentice in accounting night school paid for by a brother. Seems he also misrepresented his age by a year - perhaps to appear older and ensure he'd get the job. He then had to continue the ruse his entire life having landed it, hence the misrepresented birth date on his interment. Sloan himself had only recently been named President of Hyatt Roller Bearing (Harrison, NJ), and soon brought Ben Koether to Detroit in 1910 when he became GM Vice President (later President and CEO) at the behest of Pierre Du Pont. Simply put, Ben Koether's Hyatt/GM rise was meteoric as he shadowed Sloan through GM growth thereafter.

Ben Koether rose to Sales Manager, Hyatt Roller Bearing, in Detroit (1910-1920), then moved back to New Jersey (21 Eastwood Street, East Orange) to become Vice President - Sales and Advertising for Hyatt. In 1923, he returned to Detroit as General Motors' Vice President of Sales, Advertising and Public Relations. He was later named the first Director of Customer Relations in 1935 and retired in August, 1937 after 36 years of long association with Alfred P. Sloan - an event covered broadly in both popular and trade press:

" 'Mr. Koether. . . leaves with the best wishes of the corporation' is the tag line of the official communique issued by General Motors in accepting the resignation of Ben Koether, a veteran who has been identified with the automobile industry since 1901 and who has been with GM since 1923. . . . But when historians write the history of the automobile business they are going to find plenty of Koether footprints in the stretch from 1901 to 1938, for Ben has been a happy pedestrian all that time. We who know him recall his long association with Alfred P. Sloan, not only during the GM era but way back when. . . . it is no wonder that Sloan took Ben with him into General Motors, loading him down with many responsibilities. And it is a matter of record that Koether occupied the same office - Room 13-141 - in the General Motors building for 14 years, in which time he carved his initials deeply into the GM tree."(1)

Paralleling these career milestones, Bernard G. Koether was the first resident of three homes (first and last commissioned, second built speculatively) in Detroit's prestigious "Indian Village" (now an historic district); the last was also an early if not the first steel-framed residence in the neighborhood and included entirely custom interiors and furnishings designed specifically for the home:

1914: 3452 Iroquois Street (E. R. Dunlap & Leonard B. Willeke, architects)
1923: 2921 Burns Street (Aloys Frank Herman & Howard Thomas Simons, architects for the Cook Farm Company)
1927: 2508 Iroquois Street (Harold C. Beckett & William Roy Akitt, architects; interiors by Clarence Whybrow)

After retirement, he also purchased a winter residence in what is today the College Point Historic District, Lake Worth, Florida - and died within two years of doing so:

1939: 322 Fordham Drive

Sources:
1. "Automotive Daily News," Saturday, August 7, 1937; p. 19, cols. 2-3.