RABO Bio: Patricia Hunady Aftoora By Al Aftoora

Pat Hunady was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Joseph and Frances Hunady on January 2, 1940. Her father was a photoengraver and her mother was a stay-at-home mom. She is the oldest of three siblings and has a sister and a brother. Pat attended St. Joseph Academy High School in Cleveland. Going to college was not in the family budget so Pat began working as a Secretary in the office of Street and Smith Publications, and then as Secretary to the Treasurer of Industrial Rayon Corporation. She also attended Fenn College in their evening program.

In early 1960, when an aunt and uncle who lived in California came to visit, they offered Pat an opportunity to go to California and to help with school expenses. She started studies at UCLA but returned to Cleveland after two years. While deciding where and when to return to school, she applied for temporary work through the Ohio Bureau of Unemployment. The counselor at that agency suggested that she submit an application to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway where they were known to hire temporary clerical employees. And I guess you could say, the rest is history. Pat was hired on February 26, 1962, and began her railroad career as a temporary clerk in the office of the Treasurer. When the permanent incumbent of that position returned to work, she moved from temporary assignment to temporary assignment within the Treasury, Accounting and Finance Departments. In the meantime, she began night studies at John Carroll University.

After a year, she filled a temporary position in the Office of Secretary assisting with the preparations for the annual meeting of shareowners. This began a 38-year career in the Corporate Secretary’s office. Working on the 1963 annual meeting was very exciting, especially the invitation to travel with other department staff members to The Greenbrier for the annual meeting and assist with shareowner registration and final proxy tallying. The staff all went to The Greenbrier on the passenger train out of Toledo (the C&O did not have service into Cleveland) but on the return trip, she was offered her first ride on the C&O plane back to Cleveland. You can imagine how thrilling it must have been for a junior clerk to be on the same plane as C&O President Walter Touhy and other Cleveland-based executive officers. This was certainly a place where exciting things happened! 

From the temporary annual meeting clerical position in the Secretary’s office, Pat was awarded a permanent clerical position as Steno-Clerk. What she didn’t know at that time is that the advantage of being associated with what was probably the smallest department in the entire company would afford her an opportunity to be involved in all of the major corporate transactions, acquisitions and mergers that the C&O -- and later CSX -- would undertake. Up to this point, Pat’s temporary job was just something to do while she figured out how to achieve her goal of working in the Foreign Service. That goal definitely was put on the back burner, never to surface again. Well, that’s not quite true:

In the early 1980s, Chessie was one of the railroads involved in an anti-trust litigation involving Pinney Dock; and Pat found that she was the officer of the company “chosen” to enter the nolo contendere plea in the District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the company. Pat Vail was the Chessie attorney who was assigned the task of getting Pat through this process. Pat Vail said that after she returned to Cleveland from DC, at lunch the next day in the Greenbrier Suite of the Terminal Tower Building, Chessie President & CEO John Collinson asked her why she wasn’t wearing stripes. Pat said she told him that she would do just about anything for the company, but going to jail wasn’t included in “anything”.

In 1964, Pat was awarded the position of Secretary to Corporate Secretary Howard Keelor. He was a great teacher and mentor and offered her the opportunity to broaden her knowledge of all facets of the department beyond the structure of a job description. It was during this time that the C&O obtained control of the B&O. This meant that the Corporate Secretary’s office would add the responsibility for maintenance of corporate activities of the B&O and its subsidiary and affiliated companies. When Pat began working in the C&O Corporate Secretary’s office, there were about fifteen C&O subsidiary companies; but with each acquisition or merger, that number increased exponentially over the years. Of course, all the corporate acquisitions affected every administrative department in the company. While being the smallest of departments, the Corporate Secretary’s office interfaced with just about every department in the company, some more than others; and the Law Department certainly was one of the “more”.

In 1965 and 1966, the C&O and the N&W were working toward a merger. Pat spent several months in New York working at offices of C&O’s transfer agent, Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, keeping track of shareowner voting on the merger. Of interesting note, after the shareowner vote in May 1966, the C&O Secretary’s office actually began maintaining N&W shareowner records in anticipation of final merger approval. The C&O/N&W merger was terminated in 1968, but this function had to continue until the N&W was able to get a new shareowner system up and running.

In 1971, Pat was appointed to position of Assistant Secretary when Ralph Griebling retired. At that time, there were very few women in non-contract positions within the C&O and definitely none who was considered an officer of the company. This appointment was a milestone in her career and reinforced her decision not to pursue a career in the Foreign Service. In 1973, Chessie System, Inc., was formed and the non-rail companies were included in the structure. Pat assumed responsibility for maintaining all of the corporate records of the C&O, the Western Maryland, the B&O and all of the other subsidiaries and affiliated companies under the corporate umbrella. This increase in responsibilities earned Pat a promotion in 1979 to Deputy Corporate Secretary. John Collinson rejected Carl Hawk’s recommendation of Senior Assistant Secretary and created a new title that more properly recognized the responsibilities Pat had assumed.

CSX Corporation was formed in 1978 for purposes of merging the two rail systems, Chessie System, Inc., and Seaboard Coast Line Industries, Inc. In 1980, all the work associated with getting shareowner approval of the merger was in full swing and much of Pat’s time was spent in New York dealing both with monitoring the results of the shareowner voting on the merger as well as choosing a transfer agent for shares of the new corporation and the listing of the stock of the new corporation. At the same time, approval of the merger was being considered by the Interstate Commerce Commission.

It was during this time in 1980 that Carl Hawk, who was then Corporate Secretary of Chessie System, Inc., and all of the subsidiary companies under that corporate umbrella, had major surgery; and Pat assumed all responsibility on the Chessie side of the merger for handling matters relating to stockholder approval, the exchange of Chessie stock for shares of CSX and also listing of the CSX stock on a national exchange.

Carl Hawk returned to his position just a few months short of the actual effective date of the merger of CSI and SCLI into CSX Corporation on November 1, 1980. Carl moved on to Richmond, the new headquarters for CSX Corporation, as Vice President and Corporate Secretary; and Pat was elected Corporate Secretary of C&O, B&O, Western Maryland and all the subsidiary companies. She would also now report to the head of the Law Department, Roland Donnem.

The two main rail systems, the Chessie System Railroads and Seaboard System Railroad (formerly known as Family Lines) continued as separate operating entities with separate headquarters—Chessie in Cleveland and Seaboard in Jacksonville. The two rail companies’ Boards of Directors would meet jointly each month either in Cleveland, Baltimore or Jacksonville. During this time, an officer of “the other side”, Senior Vice President and now RABO member, Gerry Nichols, made Pat feel very welcome when on “foreign” territory.

In the years to come, he was always available to help with frustrating situations. For example, the warehouse in Jacksonville where Seaboard records (including corporate records, like minute books) were kept had no air-conditioned area and everything in the warehouse was always damp and moldy. Pat needed some of these records for a research project and brought the books into the hallway outside her office to air out. Gerry happened to come by and asked what the smell was. Needless to say, it was only a few months later that a portion of the warehouse was air-conditioned to house those records.

Effective July 1, 1986, the headquarters of the C&O was officially transferred to Baltimore, Maryland. At this same time, Pat was elected Corporate Secretary of CSX Transportation, Inc., the new name for Seaboard System Railroad, Inc. No one from the Cleveland office of the Corporate Secretary’s Department elected to transfer to Baltimore so upon arrival in Baltimore, Pat had to hire a new staff. In addition, all the corporate records stored in Cleveland had to be transferred to Baltimore and a place had to be found for them. Fortunately, RABO member Spence Sullivan, as the sole member of the C&O Corporate Secretary’s Office with an office in Baltimore, was in charge of the Records Center and was invaluable in helping to deal with all the new records coming from Cleveland.

Now with responsibility for the Seaboard subsidiary companies, time was spent traveling to Jacksonville to handle those duties. However, within a year, as further consolidations were being made in the administrative areas for both rail systems, it was necessary to eliminate that formal office of the Corporate Secretary in Jacksonville, so all the records for Seaboard and its subsidiary and affiliated companies were packed up and brought to Baltimore. Little did Pat know that in five short years, all those records would be moving back to Jacksonville, as well all the Baltimore/Cleveland corporate records. Records associated with a company that has 200 or more subsidiary and affiliated companies (former as well as active) are not contained in two or three file cabinets. It is more like two or three rooms of hundreds of boxes of minute books, board meeting supporting documents, stock books and general files. Of course, this was all before the days of digital records and paper ruled.

Just when things were starting to settle down in Baltimore with a trained staff, Carl Hawk called in August 1987 to ask Pat if she would be interested in coming to Richmond as his assistant. It was truly an honor and so began the journey of just adding one more place to be each week: Baltimore, Richmond and Jacksonville (although Richmond was where she was most often).

Carl Hawk passed away in the spring of 1989 and Pat was elected Vice President and Corporate Secretary of CSX to fill his position. Pat always had the greatest respect for Carl and will tell you that he was truly a great mentor providing her all the support needed over the years to move into that position.

In 1989, Pat and I were married; and Pat continued to spend most of the week in Richmond, returning to Baltimore on either Thursday or Friday night to spend a half day or so in the CSXT Baltimore office before heading back to Richmond. Being officers of the same company, we laughingly referred to CSX as our “family business” in that we were often at the same table signing finance documents where I signed as Treasurer and Pat attested to my signature.

In 1991, the decision was made to move all corporate and general and administrative offices from Baltimore to Jacksonville; and Pat and I both moved to the same city. Pat set up shop initially in the Bell South Building, then the SunTrust building and then the General Office Building.

I have mentioned “Records” on numerous occasions in this writing. Over her years in the Corporate Secretary’s Office, she has cleaned out all sorts of file rooms, storage rooms and warehouses where records were deposited and, in many cases, forgotten. The largest such facility was the Camden Warehouse. In 1985, during the dead of winter, she spent many hours attempting to identify ownership of records spread over shelving throughout the entire fifth floor of the warehouse. Needless to say, when records were identified and a representative of the owning department had to come and “identify the ownership and ultimate disposition”, they were none too happy. Again, Spence Sullivan provided a good deal of the leg work and assistance in this venture. Does anyone know what happens when windows are broken and birds come in and then can’t always get out? Well you get the picture!!!

While “records management” consumes much of the workload in the Corporate Secretary’s office, the Corporate Secretary’s job is far broader and deeper. Everyone who worked in Law, Real Estate or Finance, for example, had frequent interaction with Pat and her staff. For almost all of her career, Pat “babysat” the Board of Directors and handled all of the preparation for, and the follow-up reporting on, the Chessie and CSX board meetings. If you worked in the Law Department, she was an invaluable source of any document you needed to prosecute a lawsuit. If you worked in Real Estate, she found leases, agreements, memoranda and resolutions that you needed to renegotiate a lease or sell a parcel of property. If you were in Finance, she was able to locate the board resolution that authorized the acquisition of equipment that you wanted to finance.

Pat was the corporate librarian in the best sense of word. At a time when nothing was digitized, Pat and her very small team could locate any document that existed; and there are literally thousands of boxes full of documents going back to the early 1800s.

Those of you who have visited the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore should know that much of the documentation that is available there for research is the result of Pat’s dedication to the railroad heritage embodied in that excellent facility. Whenever possible, Pat sought to move documents of historical importance to a “safe haven”. As many of you know, old railroad documents have substantial financial value to collectors. With the help and historical knowledge of another RABO member, Ray Lichty, Pat made certain that the very important documents, especially those of the early B&O, did not reach the collector’s market but, rather, were safely placed in the Museum where future scholars could research those documents.

Pat retired officially in September, 2001, but for the next five years continued to assist with various projects involving research of records, primarily for litigation purposes.

Now with nine grandchildren and four children, it is not difficult to fill in our time when we are not traveling. We also spend about 2-3 months each year at our condo on the south coast of Portugal which we bought in 1990.