B&O's Ernest Chapman: Protector of the Great By Bob Withers

Most railroaders who have lived in Parkersburg, West Virginia, worked only between there and Wheeling, Grafton, Huntington or Kenova. But one Parkersburg railroader – B&O Police Captain Ernest Chapman – traveled with and helped protect every president from Woodrow Wilson to Dwight Eisenhower by White House request throughout the United States and into Canada and Mexico. By Chapman's own count, he traveled on more than a thousand White House specials. He was assigned to ride with and protect other notables as well – including former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1923 and Romania's Queen Marie in 1926.

Chapman was born to parents Lightborn and Virginia Ball Chapman in Huntington, West Virginia, on September 11, 1887. He hired out in Huntington as a patrolman for B&O's Ohio River Division on November 30, 1910. Six weeks later, he transferred to Parkersburg and in 1914 to Glenwood, Pennsylvania, on the Pittsburgh Division, as a lieutenant. In 1915, he was promoted to captain back in Parkersburg, returning to the Ohio River Division – which became part of the Wheeling Division in 1923. He took time out during World War I to serve as a Marine intelligence officer – and believed it was that experience that led the government to request his services as a presidential guard throughout the nation.

The call first came in 1921 when Washington requested his services to protect President Wilson. Eventually, the Democrat President started calling him “Ernest” and Chapman called him “Woodrow”.

Chappie's first real chance to shine occurred on September 29, 1920, when he accompanied Republican candidate Warren Harding from Parkersburg to Huntington, West Virginia, on a leg of a three-day, five-state campaign trip. As the special train passed Millwood, West Virginia, an equalizer spring broke on Harding’s private car Ideal. The candidate and his wife found themselves staggering about as the derailed car danced along on the ties – without separating from the train – in excess of 30 miles an hour for at least 900 feet and across a trestle. Only a timber guardrail along the edges of the ties kept the bouncing car from falling 20 feet into Mill Creek or the adjacent Ohio River. Chapman, however, was alert enough to grab the emergency cord and the train stopped west of the trestle just as the errant truck veered off the track entirely and buried itself in the ballast. The Hardings came out of their bedroom to view the damage. The heavy steel car had splintered or crushed ties and snapped off spike heads. But the couple was unhurt, and after 35 minutes they transferred to another car and continued their journey.

For his trouble, Chapman was called to the Hardings’ new car to receive their congratulations and thanks. Harding shook his hand and said he had felt like he was “a dying man”. He dubbed the officer “master brakeman”, and suddenly he was more in demand for presidential specials around the country.

During the summer of 1923, the Hardings combined a transcontinental rail/sea vacation with a speech-making tour and an appointment to drive the golden spike completing the Alaska Railroad. The trip was planned as a vacation and a “voyage of understanding” to allow Harding to determine the mood of the nation by personal contact and present his ideas in preparation for the following year’s re-election campaign.

Chapman sent a 23-page single-spaced report to his superior, General Superintendent Police E. L. Denton, about that trip with a cover letter dated August 24, 1923. It is the only such memo that he is known to have written – and perhaps he did so because the move was so unusual. Like Wilson before him, Harding became ill en route. Like McKinley (and Franklin Roosevelt later), his 12-car train became a funeral train before returning to the nation’s capital. And there were other problems, too, including a fatal automobile accident and a mishap at sea.

“I desire to express my sincere thanks to the management of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and yourself as well, for the honor and privilege of being permitted to make this wonderful trip with our late President,” Chapman started out, then filled the report with his observations about the Hardings; railroad operations; and the cities, sights, and national parks the 70-member party visited on the June 20-August 7 journey. “At all stops made by this train, thousands of people greeted the President,” he wrote. People lined the tracks in towns where no stops were made. The train reduced its speed to 10-miles an hour at the Hardings’ request so they could greet them from the open rear platform of the private car Superb. For the first time, a president spoke from the rear of a railroad car equipped with “voice magnifiers”. “At every place at which the train stopped, there were numerous gifts of flowers, fruits of all kinds, poultry and eggs presented to the president and Mrs. Harding,” Chapman wrote.

The program was about the same at every stop. “City officials and reception committees would meet and greet the President, Mrs. Harding and party,” he wrote. “Automobiles would be available and (they) would be motored through the principal streets, which would be lined with thousands of people, to the hotel at which they were to stop, and a reception was usually held in the lobby of the hotel, after which the President would dine and then be motored to the place where he was to deliver his address, then be motored to (the) train and depart.”

Harding made several rear-platform talks – sometimes as late as 11:30 P.M. and others as early as 6 A.M. The latter were unscheduled halts, where people had gathered and the chief executive didn’t want to disappoint them. So he hurriedly put on his “dressing gown” and came outside.

But there were those problems. Harding was aware of treachery by some of his dishonest friends who had compromised his administration – a disgrace that eventually became public as the “Teapot Dome Scandal” – so during the trip he was depressed and worried.

Then, in Denver on June 25, while Harding recuperated from exhaustion and several days of intense heat, the local press club arranged a sightseeing trip for the traveling politicians and newspaper correspondents that included lunch at the Buffalo Bill Museum on Lookout Mountain. As the tourists were returning to the city, one of the cars went over a bank and dropped about 150-feet into Bear Creek Canyon. Sumner Curtis, Washington representative of the Republican National Committee, and his driver, Denver businessman Thomas French, were killed. Four others were injured – two members of Harding's party, newspaper correspondent Donald Craig, and local businessman Thomas Dawson. Dawson died two days later. “Mr. (Guy) Gardner, representative of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Passenger Department at Denver, Mr. Harry Cooper and J.O. Sig of the United States Secret Service, and myself were in an automobile about 500-feet behind the car that went over the canyon,” Chapman wrote. “After ascertaining that we could be of no assistance, we immediately turned our car and drove two miles back to Evergreen to get a doctor, returning to the scene of the accident and assisting in handling traffic and taking care of the injured.”

More problems were ahead – with no hint at first. “I worked in uniform from Washington, D.C., to Tacoma (on the way out) and from Seattle to San Francisco (on the way back). Nothing unusual happened that I had (any) difficulty in handling the crowds that gathered around the rear of the train.”

The party set sail on July 5 from Tacoma, Washington, to Seward, Alaska, aboard the Naval Transport U.S.S. Henderson – the beginning of an 1,100-mile sea voyage. Crews had refitted the deck occupied by the Presidential party with a glass enclosure to protect everyone from the weather.

“We could easily read on the deck of the ship at midnight, without artificial light,” Chapman wrote. “At the darkest time in the night, there was a glow from the setting sun, and at 3 A.M., it was full daylight.”

Torpedo destroyers sailed in front of and behind the Henderson. It was the first Presidential trip to Alaska, and the government wasn’t taking any chances.

The first of several stops was at Metlakatia, an island, on July 8, and the party went ashore in launches. Arrival in Seward was on the morning of July 14, after the party encountered rough seas and seasickness. The “government railroad,” as Chapman referred to it, provided a special train for the party’s 450-mile journey to Fairbanks, with Alco-Brooks 2-6-0 No. 618 pulling nine cars – a baggage car; business car B-1; a “smoker” coach; sleepers Fairbanks (14 sections), Talkeetna (10 sections), and Anchorage (10 sections); compartment/observation car Kenai; diner McKinley Park; and private car Denali for the Hardings.

“The railroad provided an automobile equipped with railroad wheels as a pilot for the President’s train,” Chapman wrote. “The President and Mrs. Harding, and later different members of the cabinet, enjoyed riding in this machine viewing the scenery as they passed.”

When Harding spoke at Fairbanks, it was 94 in the shade and four people suffered heat prostration. But the President did what he came to do – tapping a gold spike into a pre-drilled hole, then clumsily whacking an a steel spike quickly substituted for it until he drove it in place. (With the railroad officially complete, its name was officially changed on August 15 from the Alaskan Engineering Commission to the Alaska Railroad.)

With all back on board, the Henderson departed Seward at 2 A.M. July 19, arriving at Cordova at 5 A.M. July 20. The party boarded a Copper River & Northwestern train and went about 50-miles to see the Childs Glacier. Back in Cordova, cannery officers presented the travelers with crabs that turned out to be tainted with copper. Several members of the party, including Harding, contracted ptomaine poisoning – although he didn’t feel the effects of it at first.

“On board the Henderson, he was the life of the party,” Chapman recalled. “(Between) Sitka (and) Vancouver, the president entered a shuffleboard tournament, his partner being Mr. Roup, one of the camera men of the party. The President and his partner lost to newspaper men. For the entertainment of the party, there were taken on the Henderson some 75 movie picture films, which were displayed in the dining room, and were witnessed by Mrs. Harding and members of the party, and viewed most of the time by the President through a window as he stood on the deck smoking his pipe. “The President was often seen on the deck playing with the mascot dogs and frequently would have lunches sent up from the table of the crew which he would eat. In every way, he was just a plain human being and impressed upon us, the bigger the man is, the simpler he is in the habits of life.”

On July 27, the Henderson ran into some heavy fog and struck one of the escorting destroyers. The only damage was an arrival in Seattle more than three hours late.

By the time the Henderson arrived in Seattle, Harding was feeling the effects of the ptomaine poisoning, but continued with his schedule of speech-making.

“We were late leaving Seattle on account the reception committee wanted the President to accept some additional hospitality, and being of such temperament as to exhaust himself to give pleasure to the others, he could not refuse,” Chapman wrote. “At the time the President arrived at the train, he looked as though he was completely worn out, and upon boarding his private car Superb, immediately retired.”

Intermediate stops between Seattle and San Francisco were canceled and Harding stayed in bed the whole time. Upon arrival at the Palace Hotel, he quickly entered the presidential suite and went to bed. He had contracted pneumonia. The return to Washington was postponed for a few days. Of course, the world soon discovered that Harding’s condition was much worse. At 7:20 on the evening of August 2, Mrs. Harding was reading to him from an article about him in The Saturday Evening Post titled “A Calm Review of a Calm Man”. Florence paused to make sure he was not getting too tired. “That's good, go on, read some more,” Harding told her. Then the President was gripped by a convulsive shudder and slumped back on his pillow. Just that quick, Harding was dead. In an instant, the private car in which he had toured the nation became a funeral car.

Crews removed a window in the Superb's observation lounge to get the coffin inside and hastily constructed a wooden stand on which to place it. “The flag which (rested) upon the casket was personally carried by me from the Southern Pacific station to and into the room in which the President's body lay.” Chapman recorded “(It) was placed on the casket by the undertaker.”

After everything was in place, Mrs. Harding and Secretary to the President George B. Christian Jr. arrived at the station in an automobile, walked through the station which was lined with thousands of people, boarded the Superb, and quietly walked by the casket and into their bedrooms. The train began its sad journey without crepe or drapery.

“Captain (Adolphus) Andrew(s), Naval Aide to the President, inquired of me if I would try to find someone to drape the rear end of the funeral train,” Chapman observed. “I secured the aid of General (John) Pershing’s orderly and J. F. Sheahan, White House attache, and the three of us draped the observation end of the funeral car while the train was running. This same drapery was on the car when we arrived at Washington.”

Throughout the trip, members of an honor guard comprised of soldiers, sailors and Marines, was ordered to stand while guarding the coffin – two in front and two in the rear.

“Mrs. Harding, thinking of the welfare of others, instructed the Army captain and Naval lieutenant in charge of the detail to permit the military guard to sit down while the train was traveling between towns, which was done,” Chapman wrote. “On the approach to each town or crowd of people, this guard immediately stood at attention in their places.”

He said that the homage paid to the President was evident throughout the trip, but especially as the fallen leader’s body returned across the continent. “Mrs. Harding, wonderful woman that she is, realizing in her own private sorrow that her countrymen had certain rights in connection with the going of their president requested that the train not exceed 10-miles an hour through the (communities) where these crowds had gathered,” he wrote.

A million and a half people lined the tracks in Chicago, forcing the train – already running late – to take two hours to run 19-miles. People swarmed like locusts on the right-of-way, laying flowers, coins and trinkets on the rails in front of the oncoming engines, then snatching the flattened souvenirs from between the trucks of the moving cars. “It (was) necessary to use the pilot of the engine to force the people off the track, and it required 44 city policemen and myself to keep the crowds off the rear car in which rested the president's body,” Chapman recalled. “On arrival at Washington, we had one solid carload of floral offerings of all designs.”

Recollecting the trip for a reporter years later, the robust and placid Chappie closed his eyes. “How we got through without hurting anyone, I’ll never know,” he said. “We tried tying down the whistle cord, but it didn’t help. Never had such an experience, before or since.”

Concluding his memo, Chapman offered several observations. “One of the striking features of the entire trip was the democratic manner in which the President and Mrs. Harding displayed their goodwill and friendship by making a special inquiry and requesting to meet, on all the railroads the officials and the employees, having them come into their private car where they were received with the greatest courtesy,” he wrote.

The officer also offered a couple of suggestions. “One of the most essential comforts for a trip of this kind was lacking, and that was shower baths, and I believe if another trip of this kind is undertaken that it could be a credit to the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company if they would have a baggage car equipped with shower baths,” he wrote. “This was successfully done when the government(’s) safety-first train(ing) was handled some years ago.”

Another subject he mentioned was modernization. “I noticed something else which could be improved upon and which was commented upon by several members of the party, and that was the baggage car equipped with gas lights, and at some points had quite a little difficulty in having baggage car supplied with gas,” he said. “Also, I understood that the gas line of the baggage car sprung a leak en route. I believe for future trips of this kind, baggage car equipped with electric lights would be a great improvement.”

Chapman also mentioned the President’s love of railroads. During a stop in a siding at Newton, Kansas, to let the schedule catch up at 5 A.M. on June 23, “early-bird” Harding told Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe engineer S. H. Yokum that his boyhood desire was to be a locomotive engineer. Later, he got some throttle time.

“One of the interesting features of the trip was the handling of the train from (Sappington,) Montana, to Avery, (Idaho), over the (Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul) Railroad, (on July 2)” Chapman wrote. “The train (was) handled between these two points by electric motor (10305), and the President rode the electric motor for several miles and operated same under the direction of the engineer in charge.”

On July 14, both Hardings climbed aboard 2-6-0 No. 618 at Wasilla, Alaska. After a few instructions from engineer F. W. Brayford, Harding took the throttle and ran the locomotive to Willow, 25.9 miles distant, in 51 minutes. Mrs. Harding rode in the fireman’s seat. With the railroad being built and owned by the federal government, and with Harding as the head of the government, one could say that the boss was running his own locomotive.

While the engine took water at Willow, Harding helped some section men paint a new bunkhouse. Discovering that young Leroy Harden, son of the section boss, was born on the day Harding was elected, the eminent traveler gave the lad a dollar bill.

Mrs. Harding was grateful for the railroad’s hospitality. After her husband’s death, she sent engineer Brayford the white gauntlet gloves he had worn while running the 618.

But Harding wasn’t through. On July 20, he took advantage of his presidential clout to secure another cab ride – and more running time  – on the CR&NW train returning from the Childs Glacier to Cordova.

One wonders if Chappie hoped Harding had boarded “Life’s Railway to Heaven” in San Francisco.

Chapman accompanied Romania's Queen Marie during her 50-day cross-country goodwill visit to the United States in 1926, during which she dedicated the Maryhill Museum of Art, which was to occupy a friend's unfinished mansion on a bluff overlooking the Columbia River near Goldendale, Washington, on November 3. The queen and her 85-person retinue traveled aboard a luxury train called the Royal Roumanian. Her royal biographer described the train as being composed of “seven private cars donated by officials of various railway companies, each with its own dining room, chef, and porters; three compartment cars; two sleepers; a general diner, changed every time the train switched railway companies; and baggage cars. “Marie’s coach alone contained a bedroom with brass bed, a bath fitted with porcelain and marble fixtures, a second bedroom for Princess Ileana, and an office; at one end was a drawing room; at the other, a private dining room and kitchen. At the end of the train was a glass observation car, used by the queen as a reception room.”

When Marie’s train stopped at Parkersburg’s Sixth Street Station on its way back East on November 19, snow was falling. Her car was still several hundred feet out on the Ohio River bridge, disappointing the 5,000 people who had gathered to greet her. Chapman walked her halfway through the train to an open vestibule, where she responded to the cheers of the crowd finally capturing a glimpse of her. She graciously accepted two large baskets of flowers from the local Women’s Club and other civic organizations.

Someone shouted, “Hey Chappie, over on this side,” and the officer walked her to the other side of the train for more greetings. Shortly thereafter, the train pulled up to spot her car at the station, where the Parkersburg High School band gave her a more proper welcome.
Marie gave Chapman a gold watch bearing the Romanian royal crest, which he carried with him the rest of his life.

Chapman once prevented Calvin Coolidge’s special from derailing when he discovered a loose rail.

“He was a funny guy, and people didn’t appreciate his humor,” the officer recalled. “But he was a grand person once you knew him. He was a stickler for traveling the straight and narrow.”

Chapman’s biggest challenge with Coolidge occurred on December 3-5, 1924, when the frugal President decided to save some of the government’s money – now there is a novel idea – by arranging for him and Grace and their special party to go Chicago as passengers on regular trains for the President’s speeches before the Chicago Commercial Club and the International Livestock Exposition.

The presidential party traveled westward on the 7-compartment/2-drawing room sleeper President Grant in the first section of B&O Train 5, the all-Pullman Capitol Limited. They returned to Washington the next night on Train 16, the Chicago-Pittsburgh-Washington-Baltimore Express.  The company made two concessions for security’s sake on the eastbound trip – Coolidge’s party was picked up at suburban Brighton Park instead of Chicago’s Grand Central Station, and at Willard, Ohio, the Coolidges’ car, the regular Chicago-Washington sleeper and the observation car were split into a first section and ran separately from everyone else.

Coolidge encountered all kinds of trouble on the trip. He couldn’t sleep in his compartment unless he opened the door, and passengers stopped to have a look at him. At dinner in the diner, the President glared back at those who stared at him. Chapman, other railroad officials and Secret Service agents were frantic. But nothing happened, and Coolidge never tried it again. Security issues aside, imagine Presidents doing that now, with access so carefully restricted to rich political supporters!

One trip with Herbert Hoover stood out in the officer’s memory – an inspection of the big Western drought that brought on America’s “Dust Bowl” and precipitated an agricultural disaster.

Chapman was in Miami with President-elect Franklin Roosevelt on February 15, 1933, when Roosevelt spoke to 20,000 American Legionnaires in Bay Front Park while sitting on the top of the back seat in his open car. As soon as he slid back into his seat, a 32-year-old unemployed Italian bricklayer, Giuseppe Zangara, jumped onto a chair and took aim at him because “he hated the rich and powerful”.

A spectator, Lillian Cross, struck the man’s arm with her handbag and spoiled his aim, but his five shots wounded a Secret Service agent, three women and Anton Cermak, Mayor of Chicago and a Democratic National committeeman, who died from his wounds nearly three weeks later. FDR had been spared by mere inches.

Chapman was aboard during World War II when President Roosevelt secretly traveled 7,243.7 rail miles throughout the Southeastern and South Central states in April 1943 to inspect military installations and defense plants. He also was on board a similar September 17-October 1, 1942, tour that basically covered the country’s perimeter. But the 1943 jaunt stands out, because it included a side trip to Monterrey, Mexico, so FDR could confer with Mexican President Manuel Avila Camacho.

B&O passenger representative Everett L. “Tommy” Thompson was riding, too, jotting down notes detailed enough to make any railroad historian salivate. On the return trip to Corpus Christi, Texas, with both heads of state on board, he noted a curious time gap that he couldn’t explain. On the way down, the train took 2 hours 3 minutes to travel the 71 miles between Nuevo Laredo and Lampazos, Mexico. But on the way back during the wee hours of April 21, the time between the same two points was 2 hours 33 minutes. “Unable to account for the delay between Lampazos and Nuevo Laredo account being asleep part of the time,” Tommy wrote.

Other sources – an article about Dewey Long, director of the White House Travel Office, in the June 16, 1951, issue of The Saturday Evening Post, and My Boss, the memoir written by Grace Tully, FDR's secretary – reveal what happened. Long and Secret Service agent Mike Reilly had panicked when the train stopped in the middle of nowhere at 2 A.M. and they could find no crewman aboard. They finally found a Mexican trainmaster who told them the crew was off the train, enjoying their customary midnight snack. Their attention was directed to a flickering light about a half-mile ahead of the train. They set out for the light and found a little hut where a blanket-clad Mexican woman was feeding them a supper of sandwiches and tequila. No amount of persuasion convinced the crewmen to return to their train until they were finished eating. Tommy missed the panic because of weariness, and we assume Chappie did, too.

Chapman protected Harry Truman on every one of his rail trips while he was in office, and the two men forged a deep personal friendship. The Captain was on board when Truman took Winston Churchill to Fulton, Missouri, on March 4-6, 1946, for the British prime minister to make his historic Iron Curtain speech. “Churchill was a fine person,” Chapman said, “and was always happy and contented – provided you furnished his with a big cigar.” On the way out, Truman and several of his aides played poker with Churchill, who fancied himself a pretty shrewd player. It turned out, though, that he wasn’t very good – and when the Brit took a bathroom break, Brigadier General Harry Vaughan, Truman’s military aide, said “This guy is a pigeon, and before we’re through with this game, we’re going to have his underclothes.” Truman didn’t allow that to happen, ordering a shift to “customer poker” –  where Churchill dropped just enough so he couldn’t return to London and “brag to his Limey friends that he had beaten the Americans at poker.”

Chapman wasn’t in on that conspiracy, but he did play with Truman during several trips. He particularly remembered one game. “I laid down a full house and bet my pocketbook,” he said. “Then Harry laid down a royal flush and nearly died laughing.” The embarrassed officer had to wire his wife back in Parkersburg to send more money “so I can take on Harry tomorrow night.”

Chapman was on board with Truman when he began his cross-country 1948 campaign swing on the morning of September 17, 1948. Walter Fitzmaurice, who covered the White House for Newsweek, was preparing a story for the March 1949 issue of Trains magazine and inadvertently offered a glimpse of Chapman's personal standards. After the train departed Washington and headed for Baltimore, Fitzmaurice banged out a lead for his Newsweek story in PRR coach 4291, the working press car, then went back to the Pullman Company's Waldameer, a 6-compartment/buffet/lounge car positioned just ahead of Truman’s armor-plated Ferdinand Magellan, to find someone with whom to share a drink. “No news, just politicians there,” he wrote. “The young man sitting just inside the rear door declines a highball, pointing with a smile to the Secret Service button in his lapel, and you know that Captain Ernest Chapman of the Baltimore & Ohio police, sitting just across the aisle, doesn’t drink. So you talk [with him] about the Magellan and long-past presidential trips.”

Chapman came out smelling like a rose as a result of a scare in Beacoup, Illionis, on October 12, 1948, when Republican opponent Thomas Dewey’s Louisville & Nashville special suddenly lurched backward toward the crowd. Dewey blew his top. “That's the first lunatic I’ve had for an engineer,” he declared. “He probably ought to be shot at sunrise, but I guess we can let him off because no one was hurt.”

The problem had occurred because engineer Lee Tindale, who was operating the first of two Class K-5 Pacifics powering the special, overshot a water tank by a few feet when pulling the second engine into position for a drink and had to back up. “I was backing so slowly that anyone could easily have gotten out of the way,” Tindale told reporters. “I gave the proper signals.” Of course, the Democrats made political hay of the incident, charging that Dewey was unfeeling and hostile to the working man. “And then the train pulled out of the station with a little jerk,” New York Times writer James Reston cracked in his column.

Just days later, Chapman’s trained ear picked up the same ominous rumbling of the slack while Truman was speaking from the Magellan’s rear platform in a small western town. A Secret Service agent always announced through a loudspeaker for people to keep back 6 feet from the sides of the train and 30 feet from the rear – but nobody listened. The 30 feet often shrank to 20. Or 10. Or less.

Newsmen often squatted on the track with typewriters – Remember them? They were like computers without monitors – on their laps within 6 feet of the Magellan's wheels. When the police captain heard the noise, he was on the ball. Without speaking a word or turning his head, he reached up and grasped the brake valve. A sigh of air stilled the rumble and the President went on speaking. “Chappie sure earned himself a medal that day,” a Secret Service agent chuckled.

During the Truman trips, CBS and MBS reporters invited him to take part in news-feature programs recorded for later broadcast. The President, Press Secretary Charlie Ross, and other POTUS advisers took part. “I assist the Secret Service in handling crowds at the rear of the train,” Chapman said rather modestly on one such broadcast. “And (I) am familiar with the mechanical and safety equipment of the presidential car.”

Of course, underdog Truman pulled off an upset victory over Dewey in the 1948 contest – so Chappie would ride many more times with him. But soon afterward, Truman flew to the naval station in Key West, Florida, for a post-campaign vacation and invited Chapman down as the campaign’s transportation hero. He accepted with pleasure and went – by train, of course.

It is not known whether Chapman learned about a plot to force Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign train to make an unscheduled stop in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, as it traveled up the former Ohio River Division’s Kenova-Wheeling line on September 24, 1952. State Sen. Bartow Jones had lobbied for the impromptu stop, and had promised the same to 5,000 local residents who gathered to see the World War II military hero. Ike’s campaign people resisted making extra stops, however, so they could keep to their schedules and not disappoint the thousands who gathered in the larger cities. So Jones got feisty. Boarding the train in Huntington, he threatened to have his men, stationed near Point Pleasant’s stockyards, drive a bulldozer onto the track to block the train if necessary and force it to stop. But it didn’t come to that. Ike granted him a private audience, complimented his tenacity and agreed to make the stop if Jones would introduce him. In all likelihood, Chapman breathed a sigh of relief.

Chapman retired in Parkersburg on September 15, 1957, and was photographed at his desk receiving gifts from his 15-member staff. He was succeeded at his post by B&O Police Lt. P. P. “Pack” Glenn of Chillicothe, Ohio; but by that time, Eisenhower, and those presidents who followed him, spent most of their travel time in the air.

The rocking chair never figured in Chappie's retirement. He planned to write his memoirs, recounting his impressions of the great and near-great he guarded on a first-name basis; but he also decided to never publicly reveal his political leanings.

He did intend to keep up with his pet hobby – circuses. Often assigned to guard circus trains traveling on B&O, he knew hundreds of circus people, from roustabouts to lion tamers. In an interview that appeared in the November 1957 B&O Magazine, he acknowledged that protecting “the mighty” aboard their trains was “a tough, unrelenting business where a moment's carelessness can ruin a career or plunge a nation into crisis.” But guarding a circus train? He leaned his sturdy bulk back into his office chair and his sharp eyes relaxed. “Now, there's fun!”

Chapman died on August 31, 1964, at age 76 after an extended illness. At the time, he was living at 1314 Welles Circle in Parkersburg. He was buried in Rockland Cemetery in Belpre, Ohio.

Survivors included his wife, Elizabeth Ward Chapman; and two sons, Ernest A. and Harold F. Chapman. Harold served as a military policeman during World War II and worked as a B&O policeman for 17 years before joining the United States Secret Service.

Chappie's pallbearers included Glenn, B&O police officers R. R. Caltrider and E. C. Orth, J. D. Henson, E. R. Clendenin, and Bronson E. “Bumpy” Deem, chief clerk to Parkersburg Trainmaster F. L. McGaha.

The author wishes to thank Archivist Ryan McPherson at the B&O Railroad Museum, retired CSX Transportation conductor G. L. “Snuffy” Cress, Caroline “Candy” Knotts (Chappie's great-granddaughter) and HistoryLink.org (essay 5318) for their help with this article.