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John Cooper Kenefick - "An Industry Giant" - $50 (Elkhorn)
condition:
excellent
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Own a piece of railroad history. Asking price is $50.
HISTORY:
John Cooper Kenefick was born in Buffalo, New York, in
1921. After graduating from Princeton and completing a
stint in the Navy, he moved to Omaha, Neb., where he began
working for “Union Pacific”.
By 1952, Kenefick was a trainmaster at Salina, Kansas. He left
the “Union Pacific” that year for a job with “Denver & Rio Grande”,
staying until 1954. From there, he worked for the “New York
Central” becoming Vice President of Operations in 1966.
In 1968, he moved to the “Penn Central” and later back to the “Union
Pacific”, returning as Vice President of Operations. Kenefick
replaced cronyism with “promotion by merit”. In 1971, he
became the railroad’s President, a position he held until 1983,
when he became Chairman of the new “Union Pacific System”,
created by the mergers with “Missouri Pacific” and “Western
Pacific”. By then he had long held a reputation as possibly the
foremost railroad operating man in the nation. His retirement
from active service with the railroad in 1986 marked the end
of an era in the company’s history.
Kenefick died on July 15, 2011, at his home in Omaha, Nebraska. He was 89.
During my 30+ years of employment at the Union Pacific, I had the opportunity to meet and speak with President Kenefick only once; it was a brief moment in time but a moment that I’ll never forget. He was one of a kind and a great loss to the railroading industry. He’ll be missed.