RIVERDALE, Ill. - Federal Railroad Administrator Joseph Szabo remembers his family's vacation days at the lake with other Riverdale families in the 1960s, according to the Northwest Indiana Times. (Szabo is the former Illinois state legislative director of the UTU.)
"Railroading has been a part of my life since I was born," Szabo said on Monday. "I would listen to my father and his friends tell stories about working on the railroad."
Today, in charge of a federal agency with 800 employees overseeing railroad safety nationwide, Szabo remembers something else about working on the railroad.
"What stays with me are the friends and coworkers killed over the years," Szabo said. "And there's a list. And I remember every one of them."
The post of Federal Railroad Administrator is generally a low profile one to the public. But that may change Friday when Szabo comes to Gary/Chicago International Airport on the heels of president Obama's Thursday announcement of the first winners in the competition for $8 billion in federal stimulus funds for high-speed rail.
The former Village of Riverdale mayor, trustee and union official said it has been a big climb going from conductor on the Illinois Central to overseeing national rail safety and rail policy from Washington, D.C. He's done it by applying lessons learned on the railroad, in the union, and as mayor.
"I understand the issues and intricacies of railroading from the ballast level on up," he said on Monday. "And as a (former) mayor, I understand the benefits of rail as well as the problems rail creates for communities."
The Indiana High Speed Rail Association is hosting Szabo's visit to Gary on Friday. Association founder Dennis Hodges said President Obama and people of Szabo's stripe are giving high-speed rail the jolt it has always needed.
"I thought Bill Clinton would be the high-speed rail president," Hodges said. "But this administration has really taken the ball and run with it. It's an exciting time for the high-speed rail movement."
Obama nominated Szabo for the top post at the Federal Railroad Administration in March. At the time, he was the Illinois legislative director for the United Transportation Union and vice president of the Illinois Federation of the AFL-CIO. From 1997 to 2000 he was mayor of Riverdale, a gritty railroad and steel-making town of 15,000 south of Chicago.
Szabo's railroad career started shortly after his 1975 graduation from Thornton Township High, when he hired on to the Illinois Central. He was conductor on the freight railroad until 1987, when he went to work as a conductor at Metra. He has an associate's degree from South Suburban College and a bachelor's degree in labor relations from Governors State University.
In his choice of occupation, Szabo was carrying on a proud family tradition. His father worked as a railroad switchman, and the three generations before his father also worked the rails.
Szabo was a key defender of Amtrak in 2005, when the Bush Administration sought to end all federal government funding for the passenger railroad.
"Any time there is a threat like that, you have to take it seriously," Szabo said. "The good news is clearly the federal leaders were out of sync with the grassroots traveling public."
Szabo was firm on Monday that the Obama administration's high-speed rail initiative is not about Amtrak. The administrator said any rail company can get into the running to operate on the new high-speed routes.
"But having said that, it's obvious if we had lost Amtrak, we would clearly be starting from scratch today," he said.
(This item appeared in the Northwest Indiana Times Jan. 28, 2010. Additional information added by UTU editors.)
