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Personality: White-haired and warmly blue-eyed, Wilson (5 ft. 10 in.) is quiet and reserved, speaks slowly (with a Midwestern twang), thinks fast, although he is not given to snap decisions. He once accepted a challenge by fast-talking Walter Reuther to a public debate, argued him to a draw. In his office he works between two desks with several briefcases at his feet and a couple of phones at his elbow. Wilson knows every part of the G.M. empire, often unexpectedly calls a junior executive in outlying plants. He works around the clock, forgetting the time, goes home to his house near Detroit only two or three nights a week, spends many a night in an apartment at Detroit's G.M. Building, working alone in front of a fireplace. He is an Episcopalian.
Recreation: Poker, bridge, cattle-raising (he has the largest privately owned herd of Ayrshires in Michigan), swimming, occasionally hunting & fishing. He gave up ice skating and fox hunting reluctantly after a couple of spills. Married for 40 years, three sons and three daughters, all married. His favorite food: chipped beef and salted peanuts.
* Not to be confused with Charles E. (for Edward) Wilson, former president of General Electric, who resigned last March as Director of Defense Mobilization, after a row with Harry Truman, or with Charles E. (for Eben) Wilson, onetime vice president of Worthington Pump & Machinery Corp. Only common complaint of the Charles E. Wilsons: the mailman often mixed up their dividend checks.