Heinz Prechter leaves a legacy

During life, Heinz Prechter was a powerful force in industry and politics.

He got his start in the 1960s, by installing car sunroofs, a feature common in his home country of Germany, but relatively unheard of then in the U.S.

Prechter built the operation into a global automotive company, ASC Inc.

At the same time, he assumed enormous influence in Republican politics, co-chairing the national finance committee for President George H.W. Bush’s 1992 re-election and bringing early support to George W. Bush’s first presidential run.

Yet his public image was very much at odds with his private torments. Prechter suffered from manic depression, or bipolar disorder, but had kept his illness secret.

On July 6, 2001, at age 59, he hung himself in the pool house of his mansion at Grosse Ile, Mich.

The sickness that had long plagued him was suddenly in the spotlight. In the years since, through the unstinting dedication of his widow, Wally Prechter, he has become an icon in the campaign for research and public awareness about the disease.

As the Detroit News’ Bill Vlasic wrote, “Wally Prechter wanted nothing held back. Her husband killed himself because of manic depression, and she wanted the world to know it.”

She testified before Congress and served on numerous boards, including the Michigan Mental Health Commission and the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Just three months after her husband’s suicide, she founded what is now the Heinz C. Prechter Bipolar Research Fund at the University of Michigan. The fund finances medical research into a cure for bipolar disorder.

One of the major projects supported by the fund is an effort to build the Prechter Bipolar Genetic Repository - the world’s largest private collection of DNA samples from people with bipolar disorder. Last year, a similar project at Johns Hopkins was merged with the Prechter Repository at U-M.

This year, with the help of a $10 million gift from Mary Meader and the late Edwin Meader, U-M created the Depression Center, dedicated to research, education and treatment of depression and bipolar disorder.

Their gift drew additional support from Wally Prechter and from former CBS newsman Mike Wallace, who has suffered from depression.

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