Bendix Battle

Mary Cunningham's farewell

It was a success story whose ending pleased no one. Three weeks ago, Bendix Chairman William Agee publicly denied that the promotion of attractive Mary E. Cunningham, 29, to vice president for corporate strategy had anything to do with "a personal relationship that we have." Far from scotching rumors that they were romantically involved, the announcement only put the spotlight on the two executives. Cunningham at first offered to take a leave of absence until the controversy cooled, but a committee consisting of six of Bendix's 15-member board of directors refused her request and asked her to stay on the job.

Last week, according to a source close to top Bendix management, members of the full board told Agee that Cunningham would have to go. The board includes such top business leaders as Burroughs Corp. Chairman Paul S. Mirabito, G.D. Searle President and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Equitable Life Chief Executive Coy G. Eklund. Moreover, Agee himself came under fire from the board for his handling of the situation. Cunningham, thereupon, quickly stepped down and issued a statement that rumors "impaired my ability to carry out my responsibilities as a corporate officer of Bendix."

Younger women executives in the U.S. reacted, for the most part, angrily to the Cunningham resignation. Many said that Agee was at least equally responsible because he naively made executive romance a topic for public speculation. Others bitterly complained that the Bendix matter will make brains plus beauty a terrible handicap for a woman in business. Asked one New York adwoman: "Do you have to look like Gertrude Stein to get ahead?"

Many executives of both sexes scoffed at suggestions that the case was an innocent public relations gaffe. A male corporate attorney in Detroit firmly said: "There is not a 29-year-old in the country who is qualified to have risen as she did in only 15 months." And some women faulted Cunningham for not being more sensitive to the delicacies of being a female executive. Said Lynn Long, a vice president of Houghton Mifflin, the Boston publishers: "A woman executive can protect herself simply by exercising great discretion and being above reproach." Discretion, however, has not been a conspicuous commodity at Bendix in recent weeks.

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