Western Railroad Discussion > Santa Fe's John Shedd Reed Passes

John Shedd Reed, 90

John Shedd Reed, former chairman and chief executive officer of Santa Fe Industries, died peacefully of natural causes at home surrounded by family on March 16, 2008, in Lake Forest, Illinois. He was 90.

Reed was born in 1917 in Chicago to Kersey Coates and Helen Shedd Reed (later Keith). He was the grandson of John Graves Shedd, second president of Marshall Field & Company, for whom Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is named. He married Marjorie Lindsay of Winnetka, IL, in 1946.

Reed attended the Chicago Latin School, the Los Alamos Ranch School, and the Hotchkiss School in Connecticut before earning a B.S. in industrial administration at Yale University in 1939 and Advanced Management from Harvard in 1955.

According to family members, Reed knew he wanted to be a locomotive engineer on the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway from the time he was four years old, having spent many hours on its passenger trains between Chicago and Pasadena to visit his Grandfather Shedd. Reed applied immediately after graduating college in 1939 for a position as an engineer. However, he was told that, “No Yale man could shovel enough coal to get an engine from Chicago to Joliet”, and thus started his career instead with the Santa Fe test department in Topeka, Kansas. In 1941 this career was interrupted when he enlisted in the Navy and attended the V-7 program at Annapolis. He served throughout WWII on the destroyer USS Niblack, and was released in 1946 with the rank of Lieutenant Commander and awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service.

He returned to the Santa Fe’s Operating Department, working for the railroad in various capacities in Amarillo and Slaton, TX; Pueblo, CO; and Marceline MO, before returning to Lake Forest in 1954. Ultimately he became Chairman and CEO of the Railway and later Santa Fe Industries, coordinating three divisions - railway, natural resources, and energy - under that holding company until his retirement in 1983. He came out of retirement from 1987-88 to serve again in this capacity in order to complete the company’s merger into the Santa Fe Southern Pacific.

Among numerous honors, Reed was heralded as Modern Railroad Magazine’s Railroad Man of the Year in 1970. His career spanned the heyday of the great passenger trains, the shift from locomotive to diesel engines, deregulation, and major mergers to lead in the country’s freight and natural resource development. After Amtrak took over operation of the country’s passenger service, Reed revoked their use of the name Super Chief, the Santa Fe’s legendary luxury liner, declaring, “It is no longer super.”

Reed served on many corporate and civic boards, including Kraft Inc., Premark, The Northern Trust Company, Lake Forest Library, The Hotchkiss School, Museum of Science and Industry, past President National Merit Scholarship Corporation, Alliance Française (Chicago), and Life Trustee of Shedd Aquarium. As President of the Shedd, he oversaw the addition of its popular Oceanarium, bringing the first whales and dolphins to an inland aquarium.

Reed was a member of the Chicago Club, Onwentsia, Shoreacres, Old Elm , and Cypress Point clubs. Until last year he still rode his 1938 Hercules bicycle, which saw the first of many cycling trips he and his wife Marjorie later took throughout France until 2006.

A memorial service will be held at 3:00 pm, April 5, at The First Presbyterian Church, 700 North Sheridan Road, Lake Forest. In lieu of flowers, memorial gifts may be sent to The Shedd Aquarium [1200 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL, 60605]; or The First Presbyterian Church, Lake Forest.

Sad! That's number 2 though, who's number three since we know these come in threes?

Dave Toussaint
Riverside, CA
SoCalRailFan.com

According to Fred Frailey's Twilight of the Great Trains, (where's Part Two, Fred?) Reed would have kept Santa Fe out of Amtrak if he could have cut the passenger trains to the bare minimum such as Amtrak eventually would run like the Super Chief-El Capitan, Texas Chief and the San Diegans. The passenger trains were the pride and joy of the railroad but under the law if they didn't join Amtrak they would have had to keep everything for at least 3 years and projections showed the passenger losses would eventually wipe out then entire freight profit so there was really little choice. Reed wasn't happy with how Amtrak ran its trains once famously describing their purple and blue interiors as resembling a French whore house (wonder how he knew!) and eventually withdrew permission for Amtrak to use the Chief names.

Mr Reed was a true railroader.

I wonder if anyone else noticed he attended the Los Alamos Ranch School in New Mexico? That was an upscale private prep school which combined outdoors skills building with a solid education. It was located in the high desert / canyons northwest of Santa Fe, and certainly not on anybody's beaten path.

The school was closed in 1939, and the government took it over for a secret project. That turned out to be the nuclear bomb.

I had no idea of this Reed/Shedd connection until I read this. What is very coincidental here is that as I read it I was wearing my Shedd Aquarium sweat shirt!! As a Monterey Bay Aquarium volunteer guide, I naturally try to visit aquariums wherever we go and went to the Shedd about 4 years ago. Mr. Reed was instrumental in getting the new marine mammal oceanarium building built and it is very forward-looking in that before all the global warming interest grew, the roof of the building is made of a soybean based material which cuts down the energy use for A/C and also reduces maintenance costs. It also gladdens the hearts of those soybean growers in Iowa and etc!!
C.

Carol Voss
Bakersfield, CA

How many remember the Shedd Aquarium baggage cars tht would roam the system?

Now the connection comes clear

He sure was a civic minded man with many diverse interests. Nice to see he was a bicycle enthusiast -perhaps that's one of the reasons he lived a long life.

Wonder if he commuted to work on the C & NW?

Dave

When Mr. Reed walked thru the El Capitan kitchen in 1967, I stood at attention. I am not kidding.

In 1968 when I worked upstairs as a steward, again Mr. Reed's inspection brought all of us to attention.

He was friendly, but took no bull.

As others have noted, his philosophy was: If ATSF is going to operate trains, they will be operated in a first-class manner. We had all the help we needed to do the job, plus mechanical people who kept the equipment in good shape.

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> How many remember the Shedd Aquarium baggage cars tht would roam the system?

The Pullman Company built a car for the Shedd Aquarium called the
Nautilus which would travel throughout the country collecting
specimens. A second car was built and is at a railroad museum in
Monticello, IL. I recall the Nautilus being handled on the headend
in regular passenger train service from Chicago to the West Coast.

peddler

Well, the one at Monticello is called Nautilus. Was there another?

Nautilus 1 and Nautilus 2. I believe 2 is the car at
Monticello.

peddler