Destined for a transportation life
WAS FIRST SECRETARY OF FEDERAL DEPARTMENT, UNDER LBJ
Alan S. Boyd, a lawyer and chief executive who helped establish the U. S. Transportation Department and served as its first secretary under President Lyndon Johnson, building a sprawling executive department that brought together more than 30 federal agencies, died Oct. 18 at a retirement home in Seattle. He was 98.
Sworn in as transportation secretary in January 1967, Boyd co- ordinated the country’s overarching transportation policy, giving equal weight to plane, train and automobile travel. His efforts laid the foundation for a Cabinet- level agency that has grown from a US$ 5.5 billion to US$ 76.5 billion budget, with a role in highway safety as well as the Saint Lawrence Seaway.
During his two years as secretary, Boyd focused on issues ranging from auto safety and driver education to air- traffic control and highway beautification. He spearheaded two major policy proposals later adopted by the Nixon administration: the creation of a trust fund for airport and airway spending, and an increased federal commitment to mass transit.
Boyd went on to a host of positions in and out of government. He led the Illinois Central Railroad as president, served as President Jimmy Carter’s chief negotiator on an aviation agreement with Britain, ran Amtrak for four years and chaired the North American wing of Airbus, helping grow the European aircraft manufacturer into a serious rival to Boeing before retiring in 1992.
“He had pretty much the most well- rounded resumé of just about anyone in American transportation in recent years,” said Jeff Davis of the non-profit Eno Center for Transportation.
Boyd seemed destined for a life in transportation. His father was as a Florida highway engineer, and his Irishborn maternal great- grandfather, John Stephenson, was credited with designing the first streetcar to run on rails in the United States.
But Boyd’s career was shaped more by luck and chance. His good fortune was evident since at least 1942, when he survived a lightning strike while visiting an aunt and uncle. Boyd had reached over to close an open window when the current jumped from a nearby tree to his body, scorching the hair off one side of his head and burning a hole in the floor.
He was unconscious for 30 minutes before a doctor revived him, according to his 2016 autobiography, A Great Honor. The doctor lived two doors down. It was a Sunday, so he happened to be home.
Boyd had by then flunked out of the University of Florida and enlisted in the Army Air Forces. He flew C- 47 transport planes in Europe, ferrying paratroopers to Normandy during the D- Day invasion, and attended law school on the advice of an Army friend. He joined a Miami law firm whose partners included U. S. Rep. George Smathers, a Democrat who enlisted Boyd to work on his successful 1950 election to the U. S. Senate.
That ultimately propelled Boyd to Washington. He also benefitted from a friendship with Florida Gov. Leroy Collins, a Democrat who named him general counsel of the Turnpike Authority and appointed him to the Railroad and Public Utilities Commission, where he later served as chairman.
When a seat came open at the Civil Aeronautics Board, Smathers called Boyd, offering to suggest him for the job. Boyd had been considering a run for Florida governor and initially rejected the offer; after Boyd changed his mind, President Dwight Eisenhower appointed him to the post in 1959.
Boyd chaired the CAB under President John F. Kennedy, emerging as a forceful advocate of airline consolidation and cost- cutting at a time when the industry had more than US$ 35 million in annual losses. He also developed a close relationship with Johnson, who was vice-president at the time.
When Johnson’s private plane crashed in Texas that year, killing the two people on board, Boyd began investigating the crash for the CAB. He updated Johnson in daily phone calls, earning his trust. In 1965, after Johnson became president, he appointed Boyd undersecretary of commerce for transportation.
“Without any false modesty, I would say, I knew how to work with the Congress. Johnson appreciated that,” Boyd said in 2001. “He didn’t have many people who understood — really understood — how the political system worked.”
After the White House decided to revive a long-standing proposal to create a department of transportation, Boyd co-chaired a task force to study the issue, then drafted legislation to create the department.
“He was the guy, more than anyone else, who went to Capitol Hill and sold them on this bill,” said Davis, who interviewed Boyd for an Eno Center oral history. While officials such as White House policy adviser Joseph Califano were also key to creating the department, he added, “much of the credit for it existing goes to Boyd.”
At that time, Boyd was throwing himself into the creation of vehicle safety standards, including a seatbelt mandate for new cars. He found less success fighting to overhaul government support for the U. S. merchant fleet, which received about US$400 million a year in federal subsidies.
When the Transportation Department was formally signed into law Oct. 15, 1966, the U. S. Maritime Administration was conspicuously not a part of the new agency. ( It joined the Transportation Department in 1981.) Public transit was also not under the department’s purview, leading Boyd to fight a “bureaucratic war,” as Davis put it, to take control of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration in 1968.
Boyd also championed passenger rail service, a focus that brought him to Amtrak in 1978. He steered the rail service through a period of benign neglect under President Ronald Reagan, and was credited with improving on-time performance, among other things.
Alan Stephenson Boyd was born in Jacksonville, Fla., on July 20, 1922.
Boyd married Flavil Townsend, a schoolteacher, in 1943, and received a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1948. His wife died in 2007. Survivors include a son, two grandchildren and a great-grandson.
In a phone interview, his son, Mark, recalled that while his father was not exactly surprised by his nomination as transportation secretary, his appointment as undersecretary of commerce came as a shock. He was having lunch one day when a Johnson staffer called him, insisting he come to the White House for a news conference.
Boyd “marched to the East Room of the White House,” Mark said, where Johnson promptly announced his appointment to the Commerce Department. “Dad was thinking, ‘ Can I talk to my wife first about this?’ What he didn’t know was that Lady Bird,” the first lady, “had called up my mom that morning,” inviting her for lunch. She was upstairs in the Lincoln Bedroom just then, watching the news conference on television.
WITHOUT ANY FALSE MODESTY, I WOULD SAY, I KNEW HOW TO WORK WITH THE CONGRESS. (LYNDON) JOHNSON APPRECIATED THAT. HE DIDN’T HAVE MANY PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTOOD — REALLY UNDERSTOOD — HOW THE POLITICAL SYSTEM WORKED.” — ALAN BOYD