Gordon Vickery (1920-1996) was a firefighter and Superintendent of Seattle City Light. He began his career in the Seattle Fire Department in 1946, rising to the rank of Chief in 1963. Vickery hired more women and racial minorities in the department, and helped found the Medic One program to provide improved onsite medical care for heart attack patients. In 1972, Vickery retired from the Fire Department, and was quickly offered the job as Superintendent of Seattle City Light, which he accepted. Vickery cracked down on nepotism, theft, and on-duty alcohol use, and cut the payroll by 250 jobs, all of which made him unpopular with City Light staff. He also increased hiring of racial minorities and promoted more women to administrative roles.
This image shows Vickery plugging an electric car into a special parking meter set up to charge the car's battery. At the time, City Light was considering the use of electric cars and installing parking meters on city streets to charge them. In May 1973, when the photo was taken, this meter outside the City Light building was the only one equipped to charge electric cars. The car, a modified Gremlin, was called the Electric Fuel Propulsion Model X144, and could drive for about 50 miles on a charge.
Caption information source: "Vickery, Gordon Francis," by David Wilma, HistoryLink, retrieved from https://historylink.org/File/2549 Caption information source: "Plug for mini-car: it spurns gasoline," by Al Watts, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 4, 1973, page A3.
