Ben W. Heineman

Benjamin Walter Heineman (born February 10, 1914 in Wausau , Wisconsin , † August 5, 2012 in Waukesha , Wisconsin) was an American railroad manager and lawyer.

Life

Ben W. Heineman was born to Walter Ben and Elsie Brunswick from Germany.

He intended to study at Yale University after attending public schools . 1930 lost his father as a result of the stock market crash in the Great Depression all assets and took his own life. Heineman therefore studied from 1930 to 1933 at the University of Michigan due to the lack of financial support . He then moved to Northwestern University Law School, where he was enrolled a year earlier than usual. He graduated from the top class and editor of the Law Review . He then worked in various law firms in Chicagobefore founding his own law firm, Swiren & Heineman.

During the Second World War he worked in Washington in the Office of Price Administration and later in North Africa on behalf of the State Department as legal advisor and assistant director on the North African Economic Board and as assistant to the American ambassador to the government of Free France .

In 1951 he was commissioned by the Governor of Illinois Adlai Ewing Stevenson to investigate organized crime in the area of ​​tobacco tax. The following year he co-wrote speeches with Arthur M. Schlesinger for Stevenson's presidential campaign.

In May 1954 he led a group of shareholders in an attempt to gain control of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway . The project succeeded and Ben Heineman was appointed Chairman of the Board of the railway company.

In 1956 he became Chairman of the Board of the Chicago and North Western Railway , again after a proxy fight . During his time, he made the traction change from steam to diesel in a very short time. He introduced double-decker cars to improve service on on-site trains. During his tenure, the transport of containers and truck trailers began. He negotiated with unions to reduce the number of jobs, reduced the unused track and other facilities. So he succeeded that the company made a loss of 5.5 million dollars at the beginning of its activity, in 1964 a profit of 23.2 million dollars. In addition to investing in the railway, Heineman increasingly focused on diversification and entered other business sectors (steel, chemicals, clothing). As a result, the holding company Northwest Industries was founded in 1968 . After the company merged with the Philadelphia and Reading Corporation , Heinemann was president for two years alongside Chairman Howard A. Newman . In 1972, the railway company was finally sold to the employees by Northwest Industries. Ben Heineman was Chairman until Farley Industries took over Northwest Industries in 1985.

During the reign of Lyndon B. Johnson , he worked intermittently as a consultant and he was also offered various cabinet positions, which he always refused. In 1966 he chaired the White House Conference on Civil Rights. He also served as director of the Illinois Board of Higher Education from 1962 to 1969 and director of the Chicago Civil Rights Summit Conference in 1966. In addition, he was on the supervisory boards of charitable, education and art-oriented foundations. In 1975 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 2002 he donated his collection of glass statues to the Corning Museum of Glass .

In 2011 he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society .

He was married to his wife Nathalie, who died in 2010, for almost 75 years. The couple had two children. He died of a stroke.

Web links

• Obituary in the New York Times on August 9, 2012
• Obituary at Bloomberg.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Member History: Ben W. Heineman. American Philosophical Society, accessed September 27, 2018 (English, with short biography).