Kermit Whitfield Senior Associate Editor 6915 Valley Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45244

Born the son of an auto mechanic in Norfolk, Virginia, Kermit Whitfield remained blissfully ignorant of all things automotive until his 16th birthday when he immediately claimed his parents' '67 Chevy Impala Super Sport for his own.

Though he spent hours in the garage helping his father, Kermit managed to learn almost nothing about cars owing to his natural mechanical aptitude, which approaches that of a small soap dish.

With the mechanical trades forever closed to him, Kermit applied to the College of William and Mary and was accepted due to a processing error. After graduating from William and Mary with a thoroughly unmarketable major in history, which he buttressed with an equally thoroughly unmarketable minor in religion, Kermit fled the country with the pusillanimous speed of a Pythonian knight rather than face his dismal employment prospects. He landed in Japan where he studied Japanese language and culture at Nanzan University. After mangling the Japanese language for over a year he returned to the United States and, following a brief stint in a commune in Vermont, was hired by Honda Motor Company to work in its Tokyo headquarters.

Soon realizing their mistake in hiring him, Honda placed Kermit in the area where they thought he could do the least damage—public relations. After 2½ years in Tokyo, Kermit transferred to the company communications department of Honda's factory complex in Marysville, Ohio, where he spent 5 years nodding his head vigorously and pretending to understand the requests of the many Japanese journalists with whom he dealt. Kermit ended his career at Honda with 5 years of service in Honda's super secret new model area, and joined the editorial staff of AD&P in December 2000.

Kermit lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and two children.