Return to Roost

Precisely why William Johnson Harahan was demoted from the presidency of the Van Sweringens' Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in 1929 has never been satisfactorily explained. Certainly that able railroad man, son of a onetime president of Illinois Central, had done nothing to impair C. & O.'s profits, which were excellent, or its West Virginia coal traffic, which was expanding. Best guess for his removal seemed to be that Mr. Harahan, who had gone to C. & O. before the Van Sweringens bought control of it in 1922, was not as close to the Bachelor Brothers of railroading as John Joseph Bernet, their crack operating head. At any rate John J. Bernet left the presidency of Erie to replace William Harahan at C. & O.

Railroadman Harahan had been too long in the business to retire in a fit of pique. Once messenger and clerk on the Louisville & Nashville, he became general manager of Illinois Central in 1904. From there he went to Erie as assistant to the president, later to Seaboard Air Line which he headed for six years and, finally, to C. & O. as president. When the Van Sweringens invited him to stay on as senior vice president under Mr. Bernet he swallowed his pride and accepted.

Last March, the quiet, grey-haired widower, father of eight grown children, did not allow his 67 years to prevent him from taking a second wife, Elizabeth M. Smith of Cleveland and Manhattan. And last week William Harahan found himself at the beginning of a second career when, following the death of John Joseph Bernet last month (TIME, July 15), he was returned to his old roost as president of C. & O.

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