Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 10, 1993 TAG: 9304100088
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
EX-RAILROAD CHIEF DIES OF CANCER
Robert Buckner Claytor, a Roanoke native who led the merged Norfolk Southern Corp. for its first five years, died Friday at his home in Norfolk after a long bout with cancer. He was 71.Claytor, a Harvard Law School graduate, joined the Norfolk and Western Railway as a lawyer in 1951 and worked his way up to president 30 years later. When NW merged with the Southern Railway in 1982, he was chosen chairman and he ran the combined operation in Norfolk until his retirement in 1987.
His leadership of the merged railroad in the 1980s was widely regarded as one of the most skillful handlings of a merger in recent times. U.S. News & World Report in 1985 said Norfolk Southern was the best example of a successful 1980s business merger.
A plain-spoken executive, Claytor related to railroad employees because he loved trains, and he drove locomotives when he had a chance. Railroading, he said once, is "not just a living, it's a way of life."
Railroading and mechanical operations are a Claytor family tradition. His older brother, W. Graham Claytor Jr., is chairman of Amtrak and a former president of Southern Railway.
Their father, W. Graham Claytor Sr., was general manager of the old Roanoke Railway and Electric Co. before transferring to New York as executive vice president of American Electric Power Co., parent of Appalachian Power. Claytor Lake was named for the senior Claytor, and his sons maintained a model rail track and a steamboat at a summer home there.
John P. Fishwick, retired chairman of Norfolk and Western, recalled that he and Claytor were "close associates and dear friends for 40 years." He said he will remember Claytor "primarily as a good man . . . He was quite a boy." They worked together on mergers and rail operations in the 1960s and 1970s and when Fishwick retired in 1981, Claytor followed him as chief executive.
Norfolk Southern, one of the nation's most profitable railroads, "set the industry standard," said Hays T. Watkins, retired chairman of CSX Corp. of Richmond, a major competitor. "Bob knew as much about the railroad industry as anyone I have ever known. . . . I just can't say enough good things about his abilities," Watkins said.
Claytor had interests enough for two or three men. He loved opera, sang tenor in the St. John's Episcopal Church choir, built stereos, tinkered with ham radios at his home in Norfolk, sailed and traveled widely with his wife, Frances Tice Claytor, who died in 1989. They raised three children.
Throughout his 36-year railroad career, Claytor was an energetic civic volunteer, especially in education. He was a leader on four school boards. He had been chairman of the boards of Hollins College and Mercersburg Academy, vice rector of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors and a trustee of the Episcopal Theological Seminary at Alexandria. Hollins gave him a doctorate in humane letters and the Algernon Sydney Sullivan leadership award.
Paula Brownlee, president of the Association of American Colleges and Hollins president during Claytor's tenure on the board, called Claytor "my favorite mentor, colleague and really good friend." From her Washington office, she said Claytor "was a giant of a person but he never made you feel little." He was on the Hollins board for 22 years.
When Claytor retired in 1990 after two terms, the Virginia Tech board commended him for his "wisdom, seriousness of purpose, sincerity and dedication."
He was chancellor of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia from 1969 to 1975. Bishop Heath Light of that diocese, based in Roanoke, said Claytor was a very active churchman. "Most memorable was his tremendous education interest, coupled with a simplicity of life. He had a generous spirit in monetary gifts and also in dealing with people."
After retiring as chairman, he continued on the Norfolk Southern board, serving as executive committee chairman until last year. He also had been a director of Richardson-Wayland Electrical Corp. in Roanoke and of Georgia-Pacific Corp. and Ashland Coal Inc.
In 1982, he drove the 611 - the last of the NW steam fleet - home to Roanoke from Birmingham, Ala., a three-day trip. It was "perhaps the greatest excitement of my entire career," he said.
He and two brothers shared the privilege of fine schooling. He prepped at the prestigious Mercersburg Academy in Pennsylvania and then earned a Phi Beta Kappa key at Princeton University. After three years in the Army field artillery, he entered Harvard, where he obtained his law degree in 1948.
Railroading was not Claytor's first career choice. His first job was with American Telephone & Telegraph Co. as one of 50 lawyers in its New York headquarters.
But in 1950 came an offer to join Norfolk and Western Railway Co. in Roanoke as a solicitor. Claytor jumped. The money, $10,000 a year, was good: three times what he had been making. It was also a chance to return to his hometown.
After 13 years and several promotions at NW, he was a vice president. Having proved himself an unusually capable lawyer, he was now out to show he could handle more than just the legal side of the business.
His big chance came in 1970, when he was named executive vice president and a member of NW's board of directors. With his responsibilities broadened, he soon was involved in the railroad's "operating side," the day-to-day business of moving freight, dealing with labor unions and keeping track and rail cars in shape.
Finally, Claytor was in his element. "Most railroad people are rail fans at heart," he once said. "They like to be where the action is."
The action got especially hot in 1978 when NW's clerks struck over a contract dispute. Claytor was the highest-ranking NW manager to take the throttle and keep the coal trains running to Norfolk.
He worked until noon at his Roanoke office, then drove Engine 1707 to Norfolk. He would return the following morning and start again the next day. They called him "the Red Baron." Like many a railroader's wife, Frances Claytor laundered his greasy coveralls.
When he was promoted to president of NW in 1980, one retired railroad executive said that Claytor had just stepped into "the loneliest job in Roanoke."
In a railroad town, he said, it was the equivalent of being "the king. . . . He can't make friends. Anybody who tries to be friendly is seen as trying to butter him up."
Many a merger in the 1980s turned out to be bloody disasters - for employees and shareholders. But Claytor helped set the tone for friendly and profitable relations between NW and Southern.
Both he and Southern President Harold Hall went out of their way to make sure that neither company's culture dominated the other's - and that theirs was a "true merger."
One of the key decisions in the NW-Southern merger, as with any merger, was where to put the headquarters. Claytor decided that Norfolk Southern's headquarters should be on neutral ground, not NW's or Southern's home base. That would help rule out any charges of favoritism.
Claytor's choice was Norfolk, and the company has since become one of the area's leading contributors to civic and cultural groups. With annual revenues of $4.6 billion and 30,000 employees, it is the largest company based in the region and one of the most influential.
Yet in spite of its size, Norfolk Southern is smaller than its main rival, CSX Corp. Claytor, however, even turned that to Norfolk Southern's advantage. Rather than squabbling among themselves, he persuaded his manager corps soon after the merger to focus on outdueling their larger rival. The strategy worked exceedingly well.
Throughout his nearly five-year chairmanship and ever since, Norfolk Southern has consistently ranked as the most efficient and profitable of the nation's major railroads. Its track is better maintained than its competitors' and it has been unusually aggressive at cutting excess labor and other costs.
That is not to say that Claytor left a perfect record behind him.
He made one major miscalculation: an unsuccessful two-year effort to buy Conrail.
Claytor had hoped, in his bold gamble for that Northeast railroad, to make Norfolk Southern the nation's largest rail network. A key congressman blocked the deal, however, and the government eventually sold Conrail through a public stock offering.
His take-charge bent backfired in 1986 when a Norfolk Southern excursion train he was driving derailed near the Great Dismal Swamp in Chesapeake. Fourteen passenger cars left the tracks and 200 people who were traveling on the Sunday pleasure trip were injured.
He jumped out immediately and ran back to help, staying until the last of the injured had been evacuated to hospitals many hours later. The next day he visited every patient who was hospitalized. Even though he was never charged with any wrongdoing, friends say he anguished over his role in the accident.
"You never put that day behind you," he said in late 1986. "Oh no, you have some days in your life when you shouldn't have gotten up in the morning."
But most days, the railroad industry was better off because Claytor got up and went to work.
Claytor is survived by a daughter, Jane Webster, Norfolk; two sons, Robert H. Claytor, Columbia, Tenn., and J. Preston Claytor, Lanexa, New Kent County; two brothers, W. Graham Claytor Jr., Washington, and Richard Claytor, Bethesda, Md., and two grandchildren.
A funeral will be Monday at 11 a.m. at the Episcopal Church of the Ascension in Norfolk. Another service will be at St. John's Episcopal Church in Roanoke Tuesday at 2 p.m.
Memorial gifts may be made to the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia in Norfolk or the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia in Roanoke.
Staff writer Mag Poff and David Mayfield of Landmark News Service also contributed to this report.