Like Father, Like Son

At a whistle-stop near Crookston. Minn, one day last week, the brakeman on a Great Northern local turned to the conductor and said: "Well, we got the new boss." "Who?" asked the conductor. "John Budd?" "Yup," said the brakeman, "his father always wanted him to have the job."

At 43, John Budd, son of longtime (1919-32) Great Northern President Ralph Budd, became the second youngest president of a major U.S. railroad.* During summer vacations from Yale Budd worked on a survey gang for the road, became assistant to the Great Northern's chief electrical engineer on graduation in 1930, and in 1940 (long after his father had left the road to head the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy) became a division head in Oregon.

After the war, in which he was a colonel in the Army, Budd became president of the Chicago & Eastern Illinois, where he took the road from a $517,901 deficit in 1946 to a $844,803 profit in 1947. He returned to the Great Northern as operating vice president in 1949. His first job as Great Northern boss: buying $14.5 million worth of new equipment.

*Youngest: Chicago Great Western Railway Co.'s William Deramus III, who was 33 when he took the job in 1949.

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