My dad was a Union Pacific Railroad lifer. He started his career on the grimy side of the railroad business, wrestling boxcar knuckles into place, bleeding brake lines and looking for hot boxes and flat spots. Then, he was supervising guys who did those things.
But, eventually, there was a time when he found himself unwittingly in the middle of one of the biggest news stories of the day, facing a throng of eager photographers and newshounds on a cool California morning.
And he didn’t like it one bit.
From the time he turned down a Southern California oilfield job at the end of World War II to his surprise retirement before his 61st birthday, Jack Lehmer was a loyal U.P. man. He rose through the ranks, from a humble carman to General Car Foreman of the Council Bluffs, Iowa, operation, a high-level management position.
There were years of cheese sandwiches on the midnight shift, but there was also a summer-long stint in Chicago, building new passenger cars. There was also the free travel by rail that allowed me to see Ted Williams play baseball in Kansas City and let our family take frequent vacations to the West Coast. When the young Jack Lehmer decided to build his own house to accommodate his growing family, he bought a couple of truckloads of lumber reclaimed from old U.P. boxcars to use as sub-flooring. He’d drive nails halfway during the day and wife Elsie would finish the job at night when he was off to work.
It was no surprise when in his mid-40s, Jack was promoted to the U.P. Staff, working out of the railroad’s Omaha headquarters. His specialty was cleaning up derailments. The U.P. had one of the mightiest derricks around, perfect for cleaning up those tangles of heavy railroad cars that had found themselves at the bottom of ravines or simply in impossible piles of mayhem.
So, he was more than a little surprised with his simple assignment in the fall of 1966: Represent the railroad on a train trip from Omaha to Los Angeles and return. Just be there in case something happens, he was told.
It wasn’t much of a train. There were the locomotives, of course, but only two cars – a U.P. car carrying Dad and a few staffers and a private car of unknown origin, that had started its cross-country trip a couple days earlier in Boston.
According to Dad, it was an uneventful trip for the first 36 hours or so. Then, just outside of Las Vegas, the train ground to a halt. It was after midnight and pitch black. Through the darkness, Dad could see someone being carried from the mysterious unknown railcar on a stretcher, deposited in a waiting ambulance and quietly whisked away.
What the hell? Dad checked with his boss in Omaha who told him: Just stay with the train to Los Angeles, turn around and come home.
In Los Angeles, Dad was greeted by a gaggle of reporters and photographers worthy of a Hollywood premiere.
“Is he here?”
“Where is he?”
“Where’s Howard Hughes?”
Dad was flummoxed by all the unwanted attention.
“I don’t know anything,” he said repeatedly, eventually shaking free of the throng.
The reporters knew more than Dad. It was, indeed, Howard Hughes, who was carted from the train in North Las Vegas a few hours earlier. Getting the story of the reclusive Hughes would be a big scoop for any newspaperman.
In constant pain from injuries suffered in a plane crash years earlier, the then-60-years-old Hughes was reportedly addicted to painkillers and was an acknowledged germophobe. In Vegas, Hughes was taken not to a hospital but to the Desert Inn hotel, where he rented the entire eighth and ninth floors. When the owners told him he’d have to leave before New Year’s Eve because the place was fully booked, Hughes bought the place, starting a buying spree that resulted in him eventually owning a sizable chunk of the city’s most valuable real estate.
Hughes died of kidney failure at age 70, sparking a contentious battle over his $2.5 billion estate. It wasn’t settled until 1983, seven years after his death.
Dad, meanwhile, left the staff for the General Car Foreman’s job, a move he was more than happy to make. He rarely talked about his brush with fame.
It was a terrible experience, he'd say.
Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand -- Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died: The Last Tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- is available at Amazon.