W. Graham Claytor

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William Graham Claytor (1984)

William Graham Claytor, Jr. (born March 14, 1912 in Roanoke , Virginia , † May 14, 1994 in Bradenton , Florida ) was an American manager and civil servant. He has served as President of the Southern Railway and Amtrak, as well as Secretary of State for the Navy and Acting Secretary of Transportation .

Life

Education and Early Life

W. Graham Claytor grew up in Virginia and Philadelphia . His mother was the poet Gertrude Harris Boatwright Claytor , and his father was vice president of energy company Appalachian Power . In 1933 he graduated from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville . He finished law school at Harvard University in 1936 with summa cum laude . He then worked for the law firm Covington and Burling . From 1947 he was a partner in the firm.

He was a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve and commanding officer of several ships during World War II from 1941 to 1946. During the sinking of the USS Indianapolis , he commanded the destroyer USS Cecil J. Doyle and was thus instrumental in rescuing over 100 people.

Southern Railway

After the war he worked as a lawyer in Washington, DC until 1967. In 1963 he moved to the management of the Southern Railway. In 1967 he became president of the company and in 1976 chairman and chief executive officer . He held these positions until his appointment as Secretary of State for the Navy in 1977. In the same year he received the award "Virginian of the Year". During his tenure, the decision was made not to participate in the establishment of Amtrak and to continue its own passenger train service. He also introduced excursion trips with steam locomotives. This was an enormous publicity for the railway company.

Employment in civil service

Claytor was appointed Secretary of the Navy through President Jimmy Carter . During his tenure until 1979 he ensured an improvement in the legal status of women and homosexuals in the Navy. From 1979-1981 he was appointed its Deputy Defense Minister ( Deputy Secretary of Defense ). From July to August 1979 he was acting minister of transport after Brock Adams resigned .

Amtrak

In 1982, the retired Claytor was named president of the state railroad company Amtrak . During his tenure he tried to improve the operating result . For example, he increased the coverage of the company's $ 1.7 billion budget from 48% in 1981 to 80% at the end of his tenure. He achieved this with rigorous austerity measures and aggressive marketing. He succeeded in fending off attempts by the Republican governments under Ronald Reagan and George Bush to cancel the grants to society. At the same time, he is committed to the expansion and renewal of the electrified routes in the Northeast Corridor in order to also realize high-speed traffic in the United States. During his term of office, the associated test drives with the German ICE , the Swedish SJ X2 around the Spanish Talgo also fall . In 1989, the magazine awarded him Railway Age award Railroader of the Year . In 1991 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1993 he stopped working.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Cary Franklin Poole and George H. Drury: Southern Railway System . In: William D. Middleton, George M. Smerk, Roberta L. Diehl (Eds.): Encyclopedia of North American Railroads . Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN 2007, ISBN 978-0-253-34916-3 , pp. 983 .
  2. R. Clifford Black: The Acela Express in Japan Railway & Transportation Review, March 2005 ( Memento of the original from June 13, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 245 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jrtr.net