Changes of the Week

P: Robert Walter Minor, 36, was nominated for membership on the eleven-man Interstate Commerce Commission, the youngest man ever named to the oldest regulatory body in the U.S. Government.

A native Ohioan and Big Man on Campus (Ohio State), Minor came to ICC by a remarkably circuitous route. He worked summer vacations as an entertainer in New York's borscht circuit, later spent a year touring 40 states with a Major Bowes unit as part of a three-man comedy act called The Micro Maniacs. Drafted into the Army in 1942, Minor rose to command a machine-gun company in the Normandy invasion (where he received the Purple Heart), went back to civilian life in 1946 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and returned to Ohio State, where he graduated as top man in his law school class. In 1949 he became administrative assistant to Ohio's Senator John Bricker, later moved on to become assistant to Deputy Attorney General William P. Rogers. Bricker, whose law firm represents the Pennsylvania Railroad, sponsored Minor for the $15,000-a-year ICC post, but according to Rogers, "Anybody who thinks he could be persuaded by special pleading just doesn't know Bob Minor." Minor, who classifies himself "a Theodore Roosevelt Republican," says: "I'll be so completely unbiased that I'll travel in nothing but planes. No, I take that back; I am guilty of prejudice--my grandfather used to paint boxcars."

P: Rex L. Nicholson, 53, moved into the presidency of Liquid Carbonic Corp., largest domestic producer of carbonic gas and dry ice (1954 net sales: $51 million), succeeding William A. Brown, who resigned last month after control of the company passed to a stockholders' group. Texas-born, Nicholson has been successively a cattle dealer in Amarillo (1910-24), a construction superintendent in Tacoma, Wash. (1924-37), assistant administrator of the Federal Works Agency, Western Division (1937-44), since 1945 president of Pacific Tractor & Implement Co. of Richmond, Calif.

P: Myron C. Taylor, 82, chairman and chief executive officer of U.S. Steel from 1932 to 1938, retired as a director after 30 continuous years on the board. Brought in by the House of Morgan in 1927 to scurf the accumulated rust off the company management, Lawyer Taylor, a recognized troubleshooter, did two important jobs for Big Steel. He reorganized its finances to weather the Depression, a decade later reorganized its labor policy to weather the social tides of the New Deal. In 1927-29 Taylor paid off $340 million on the company's bonded indebtedness so that when the crash came the company was financially secure. In 1937 he broke with the antilabor, coal-and-iron police tradition of Founder Elbert Gary, became the first steelmaker to sign with John L. Lewis' C.I.O. According to legend, the crack in the ranks of steel came one day in Washington's Mayflower Hotel lobby, when handsome Mrs. Taylor spied Lewis' leonine head, bade her reluctant husband: "Myron, I want to meet that man ... so bring him over here." On retiring from active management, Taylor became a diplomatic troubleshooter for Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, was their personal emissary to the Vatican (1939-50).

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