Looking Younger

Since Ben W. Heineman, 53, took control of the Chicago & North Western Railway eleven years ago, he has injected a youthful zip into the once floundering company. Last week he gave a further injection, naming 40-year-old Larry S. Provo to the company's No. 2 spot and making him just about the youngest president of a major U.S. railroad. Heineman has shifted some of his previous duties to the new man, but is not exactly ready for a golden-years club. He continues as chief executive officer as well as chairman.

Neither Heineman nor Provo could be called a typical railroad man. Heineman is a lawyer who got into the railroad business after a 1954 proxy fight, when he took control of the smallish Minneapolis & St. Louis Railway. A 27-year-old accountant named Provo was brought in to help straighten out the corporate mess. Heineman liked Provo, and soon after hired him away from Arthur Andersen & Co., the accounting firm, and gave him a vice-presidency. Two years later, Heineman moved to the C. & N.W. and took Provo along.

Energetic Ben Heineman is not turning over the whole railroad to his protege. The new president is expected to devote much of his time to organizing North Western Industries, a holding company that will place the C. & N.W.'s diversified industrial operations under the same roof with the railroad.

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