Multifaceted Businessman Ben Heineman Dies at 98

Ben W. Heineman, a leading lawyer and businessman who took over the railways, has created one of the nation's first conglomerates and became a close confidant and adviser to President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Sunday at Waukesha, Wisconsin

The cause was a stroke, his son, Ben Jr. said.

Joseph A. Califano Jr., who was deputy chief of the National Johnson said in an interview Thursday that the president had asked him repeatedly to call for advice to Mr. Heineman.

President said that the value of business acumen of Mr. Heineman, honesty and understanding the laws and social programs that the government expected Johnson to play in areas such as civil rights, health, education, control of 'pollution and consumer protection.

"More than anyone, understood what we were trying to do," said Califano. "It was a selfless. I had a personal agenda. He said, as if it were, is very difficult, and most importantly you can do to a president or one of his colleagues, like me, because people are generally fawning over you. "

While working in law or business, Mr. Heineman often had jobs in different governments in Illinois, almost all without pay, serving governor Adlai E. Stevenson and Mayor Richard J. Daley, of Chicago. Johnson was offered a number of places - Ambassador to the UN or the head of the Department of Commerce, Office of Management and Budget or the Department of Health, Education and Welfare - he refused. He, however, serve as chairman of the White House Conference on Civil Rights.

Mr. Heineman and his family lived in an integrated neighborhood in Chicago, and has found that people who left because blacks moved to be "objectionable".

In addition to his government service, Mr. Heineman, who once described himself as "a professional problem solver", has had two successful careers: 20 years of law in Chicago, and 30 years. He turned around the business in 1954, when he led a group of shareholders in a power struggle for control of Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway, which was known in some circles as the "poverty and still limping. "

In a letter to shareholders, the group of newcomers to Mr. Heineman has accused managers of the railroad to run a "gold mine" for themselves and called "the final lax, the extravagance and inefficiency."

The rebels won, and Mr. Heineman has become CEO of the railroad.

In 1956, he took up driving a much larger system, the Chicago and North Western Railway, which was known errors and mismanagement. They buy new equipment, the trains running on time and fought the unions, insisting that the work to eliminate obsolete. In 1964, the railroad $ 5.5 million became a deficit of $ 23,200,000 profit.

Mr. Heineman began to acquire other businesses - steel, clothing, chemicals - to form the Northwest Industries, one of the country's largest conglomerates. In 1972, under his leadership, the company sold the railroad to its employees, producing 200 million dollar tax benefit to the northwest of the country, that Mr. Heineman then used to acquire other companies. He retired from the company in 1985.

"He refused to take stock options," said Califano. "I thought that that a company must pay your money and invest in the company. This country today would be much better if we had a dozen business leaders from the middle, such as Ben Heineman. There was a bit of greed in him. "

Benjamin Heineman was born February 10, 1914, in Wausau, Wis. He attended public schools and earned his pilot's license at age 14. I was hoping to go to Yale, but in 1930, when Mr. Heineman was 16 years old, his father was ruined and committed suicide.

It was at the University of Michigan from 1930 until 1933 and then persuaded the Dean of the Faculty of Law at Northwestern University that lets you record a year in advance. He graduated in 1936 at 22 years, editor of the Law and the top of his class. He has worked in law firms in Chicago and began his, and Swiren Heineman.

In 1952, Mr. Heineman has worked on the presidential campaign as a writer of speeches for Mr. Stevenson, in collaboration with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in a speech denouncing the tactics of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, who led the hunt for communists in the federal government.

"He was president of the Illinois Board of Higher Education 1962-1969, and 1966, when racial conflict at its worst, Mayor Daley appointed him president of the Summit Conference in Chicago for the Civil Rights Fair Housing.

Mr. Heineman served on many boards in the arts, education and charity. In 2006, he and his wife, Natalie, donated his collection of glass sculptures, worth some $ 10 million, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York

Also his son, Mr. Heineman will survive a daughter, Martha Heineman Pieper, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His wife died in 2010, after nearly 75 years of marriage.

As head of a railroad, Mr. Heineman was to keep their customers in mind. He told Life magazine in 1964, "I do not think people want glamor - they want to train to work and working time The same applies in all areas of transport If I were in the field of aviation, I take .. Champagne and imaginative dishes, but they break their necks to provide aircraft that came and went just in time ".