[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 62 (Wednesday, May 18, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: May 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                   TRIBUTE TO W. GRAHAM CLAYTOR, JR.

                                 ______


                             HON. AL SWIFT

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, May 17, 1994

  Mr. SWIFT. Mr. Speaker, it was not quite 6 months ago when the 
Congress overwhelmingly passed House Joint Resolution 294, a resolution 
to express appreciation to W. Graham Claytor, Jr., for his dedicated 
and inspired service to our Nation. W. Graham Claytor, Jr., who had a 
distinguished career in both public and private sectors, died on May 
14, 1994, at the age of 82. Don Phillips of the Washington Post wrote a 
fitting tribute to the great man that I had the privilege of working 
with when he was president of the National Railroad Passenger 
Corporation. I insert it in W. Graham Claytor, Jr.'s honor and memory:

          W. Graham Claytor Jr., 82, Ex-Amtrak President, Dies

                           (By Don Phillips)

       W. Graham Claytor Jr., 82, a six-decade Washington presence 
     who retired last year after 11 years as president of Amtrak, 
     died yesterday at a hospital in Bradenton, Fla., of 
     complications of cancer. He lived in Washington and Holmes 
     Beach, Fla.
       He had been a corporate lawyer, president and board 
     chairman of the Southern Railway, and deputy secretary of 
     defense and acting secretary of transportation in the Carter 
     Administration. A World War II Navy veteran, he served as 
     secretary of the Navy from 1977 to 1979, leading it into its 
     first recognition of women's right to serve on ships and of 
     gays' right to leave the service without criminal records.
       He was best known for his decade as president of Amtrak, 
     starting in 1982. He is credited with bringing political and 
     operational stability to the nation's passenger train 
     network, keeping the trains running despite repeated attempts 
     by the Reagan and Bush administrations to ``zero-out'' its 
     funding.
       Mr. Claytor was born in Roanoke, Va., and grew up in 
     Virginia and Philadelphia. He was a 1933 graduate of the 
     University of Virginia and a 1936 summa cum laude graduate of 
     Harvard University law school. He had served as a president 
     of the Harvard Law Review.
       His first job after law school was as clerk to Learned 
     Hand, a legendary U.S. Court of Appeals judge in New York. In 
     1937, Mr. Claytor moved to Washington to become law clerk to 
     U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Louis Brandeis. 
     Washington was considered a lawyers' backwater in those days, 
     and normally any bright young attorney like Mr. Claytor would 
     crave a job in New York.
       ``But I didn't like Wall Street law firms,'' he said in an 
     interview several weeks before his death. ``I didn't like the 
     business they did. And I didn't want to live in New York 
     City.''
       He joined a fledgling Washington law firm, Covington & 
     Burling, becoming the junior associate in a 28-lawyer firm. 
     The firm became one of the city's leading legal 
     establishments.
       Mr. Claytor said he saw war coming and tried to join the 
     Navy in 1940. At first, he was rejected as too old for active 
     duty as a Navy officer, but a recruiter discovered a special 
     category for overage volunteers who had once been seamen, 
     such as a tugboat captain
       ``So I had been sailing the Chesapeake Bay for four years, 
     had my own boat, won some races, loved it,'' he said. ``So I 
     got in that way.''
       As commander of the destroyer escort Cecil J. Doyle in the 
     Pacific in July 1945, Mr. Claytor sped without orders to 
     check reports of men floating in the water. As he approached 
     at night, he turned searchlights on the water and straight up 
     on low clouds, lighting up the night and exposing his ship to 
     possible attack by Japanese submarines but rescuing almost 
     100 survivors of the sunken cruiser Indianapolis.
       Turning on the lights violated ``all known regulations,'' 
     he said. ``You tried not to thumb your nose at rules, but we 
     didn't let it interfere with our judgment as to what was 
     best.
       After the war, Mr. Claytor returned to Covington & Burling, 
     becoming a partner in 1947. Among his clients was Major 
     League Baseball, and he become general counsel under Happy 
     Chandler, the baseball commissioner.
       In 1963, he was persuaded to become vice president-law for 
     Southern Railway, headquartered in Washington, Mr. Claytor 
     was a rail fan who began taking photos of trains early in 
     life and who amassed one of the country's outstanding 
     collections of toy trains, which filled shelves from floor to 
     ceiling in his Georgetown home.
       One of his duties at Southern was to help rid the railroad 
     of money-losing passenger trains. He became president in 1967 
     and board chairman and chief executive officer in 1976. He 
     retired in 1977.
       After serving as Navy secretary, he briefly was acting 
     secretary of transportation in 1979 after the resignation of 
     Brock Adams. Mr. Claytor was deputy secretary of defense from 
     1979 to 1981.
       As Navy secretary, which he once described as his most fun 
     job, he allowed women to serve on some ships for the first 
     time and ordered that homosexuals be given honorable 
     discharges rather than be subjected to courts-martial. Later, 
     as deputy defense secretary, he peruaded the Defense 
     Department to adopt the homosexual policy service-wide.
       When Amtrak was formed to save passenger train service in 
     1971, Claytor had refused to allow the Southern's New York-
     New Orleans Southern Cresent to join. At a loss of several 
     million dollars a year, he chose to keep the Crescent running 
     as a Southern train, and he regularly rode it to check on 
     service quality.
       ``Amtrak, we could see from the initial setup, was going to 
     be an operation run by non-railroad people who were going to 
     screw it up almost beyond redemption,'' he said.
       The Crescent remained a Southern train until after Mr. 
     Claytor's retirement. However, in 1982, the year after he 
     left government, Mr. Claytor assumed control of the Crescent 
     and all the country's other passenger trains as Amtrak 
     president.
       He said Reagan White House staffers opposed selection of a 
     Democrat, but then-Transportation Secretary Drew Lewis and 
     Vice President George Bush championed his cause.
       At Amtrak, Mr. Claytor set about to put the corporation on 
     a businesslike basis, tightening labor rules and sharply 
     cutting costs. Amtrak was covering about 80 percent of its 
     operating costs from ticket sales when Claytor left, up from 
     48 percent when he arrived.
       Among his achievements was the restoration of Washington's 
     Union Station as a train station. The station passenger 
     concourse was renamed ``Claytor concourse'' earlier this year 
     in his honor.
       Survivors include wife, Frances Murray Claytor of 
     Washington and Holmes Beach, Fla.; a son, W. Graham Claytor 
     III of Alameda, Calif.; a daughter, Murray Claytor of 
     Atlanta; a brother, Richard A. Claytor of Bethesda; and two 
     grandchildren.

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