Link to Greatness

In his youth Frank James Gavin had as big a hero as a railroad man could wish. Hired on as a $15-a-month office boy for the Great Northern Railway, Gavin went to work for James Jerome Hill, the line's pioneering founder who flung the Great Northern across the western top of the U.S. with such impatience that he once left his snug private car to help a section crew dig the locomotive out of a snowbank.

Young Gavin often peeked around a boxcar for a glimpse of the old man ("nobody dared come into his presence uninvited"), rose through station agent to division superintendent at Spokane in 1916, the year Jim Hill died. Gavin kept on climbing, was made president in 1939, brought the Great Northern successfully through the trying days of World War II, afterwards was one of the first Western railroad men to modernize. In 1951 Gavin stepped out of the presidency and up to chairman of the board, the title previously held only by Hill and his son, Louis Hill. Until he broke a hip last fall, Gavin continued to take an active interest. Last week President John M. Budd informed Great Northern stockholders that Gavin, ailing at 78, had decided to resign as chairman and director.

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