When James Fishbeck was a young boy living in Alpena, his father gave him interesting gifts to catch his attention. A chemistry set failed to ignite anything in the young man, as did a microscope. However, his Dad hit a home run with a Knight 6-in-1 kit—which turned out to be a life changer.
“It was the best Christmas ever,” Fishbeck remembers. “I opened the box to find six things to make work. My favorite was a one-tube radio. By the time I was in junior high, I was living in Lansing and committed to becoming an electrical engineer at MSU.”
Fishbeck worked his way through college as a transmitter engineer at WILS Radio, a commercial AM/FM station in Lansing. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1966 and headed to Iowa to work for Collins Radio as a flight control systems design engineer.
At Collins, he was on the team that designed a new custom flight control system for the country’s first jet-powered Air Force One, an Air Force version of the Boeing 707. He also served as the on-site engineer who oversaw the installation.
“I worked on Air Force One during the first year of Nixon’s presidency. A side benefit was being able to observe the transformation of the airplane’s interior from LBJ’s cowboy motif to a blue-and-gray design that the Nixons wanted,” Fishbeck says.
Then one day, Fishbeck was polishing his shoes over a newspaper when a job listed in the help-wanted ads caught his eye.
That lucky happenstance led him to spend the next 30 years in key roles at the semiconductor company Analog Devices. His positions ranged from product marketing manager to director of corporate marketing, and finally director of investor relations reporting to the CEO.
