Former St. Louis man makes good.

With apologies to Jerry Berger:

Former St. Louisan and Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. topper Ed Whitacre has been named chairman of the board of the “new” General Motors.

For those who don’t remember Southwestern Bell, it once a “Baby Bell” and part of AT&T. Its headquarters were in St. Louis. (Note to younger readers: Yes, there used to be just one phone company, and yes, St. Louis was actually a headquarters back then…really. Ralston, the brewery, the phone company, McDonnell Douglas, the big banks. You could look it up. Also, there was once a World’s Fair and an Olympics here. And phones used to have cords).

Then in 1984 the government split up AT&T and Southwestern Bell became a “regional Bell operating company.” Under Mr. Whitacre’s guidance, it started buying other regional operating companies and renamed itself SBC Corp.

In 1992, Mr. Whitacre up and moved his headquarters to San Antonio, Texas. The rumor about town was that he was upset because he couldn’t get into the St. Louis Country  Club.  Inasmuch as he was pals with Chuck Knight of Emerson and August Busch III of Anheuser-Busch, who used to run just about club that was worth belonging to, we always sort of doubted that rumor. Nevertheless.

In San Antonio, Mr. Whitacre kept buying companies until SBC wound up owning most of the old Bell System, whereupon it renamed itself again, becoming AT&T all over again. He retired from the phone company in 2007.

Now he’ll be charged with helping to run (with a lot of help from the government and the UAW, who jointly own more than 75 percent of the new GM) turn around General Motors. Just think…if they’d let him into the country club, maybe he would have moved GM to St. Louis.