New Board Members Welcomed at NRRHoF Annual Meeting

The National Railroad Hall of Fame welcomed three new board members during its annual meeting in January. 

Bob Gilstrap is currently the Chief Financial Officer at the National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources in Galesburg, Illinois, where he has worked for the past nineteen years.  He holds an MBA from Bradley University and will serve on the Hall of Fame’s Finance Committee.

“Bob’s financial and marketing expertise will be valuable to the project as it progresses through these next critical phases,” said Hall of Fame Treasurer, John Winston. 

Gilstrap said he was impressed by the project’s potential to create “a great deal of positive economic impact” for Galesburg and the surrounding area.  “I’m excited about this opportunity and am ready to go to work for the board,” he added.

Mark Johnson of Peoria, Illinois, served as Project Manager of the proposed Caterpillar Visitor Center for six years prior to his retirement in April 2009.  He remains involved in the project as a project manager for Peoria County on construction matters related to the proposed Peoria Riverfront Museum.  Construction of this new museum in downtown Peoria is currently scheduled to commence this summer. 

Hall of Fame Board Chair Jay Matson said he was “delighted” to welcome Johnson as a director, adding that Johnson’s experience with the Peoria project and his engineering background will bring unique expertise to the Hall of Fame board.

Johnson joined Caterpillar in 1972 as a welder while finishing his mechanical engineering degree.  He worked in the Peoria area on a variety of assignments focused on product development and marketing of track-type tractors for over 30 years.  Johnson has been described as “a very principled person, very plain spoken,” whose work ethic was apparent from the time he started as a welder with the company.

Susan Twomey is the Executive Director of the Buchanan Center for the Arts in Monmouth, Illinois, a position she has held for the past two years.  In this role, Twomey presents seven to nine featured exhibitions a year.  This past summer, she organized the Buchanan Center’s first national juried art show, receiving over 400 entries from across the country. 

Most recently, she secured the Smithsonian Institution’s Journey Stories exhibition, making Monmouth one of only six communities in Illinois granted the opportunity to host this traveling exhibit.  Only three weeks into its scheduled run, Journey Stories has attracted over 1,700 visitors to the Buchanan Center, and the local component of the exhibit which Twomey compiled has won accolades from the Smithsonian Institution’s William Withuhn, Curator Emeritus, History of Technology.