Fourth-generation railroader Michael Haverty believes in the power of determination.  It’s a trait he learned as a boy from the grandmother who raised him, and it has served him well throughout his career:

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- in the railyards on the south side of Chicago as his Mo-Pac trains were being firebombed by rioters after the 1968 Democratic National Convention,

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- in union halls of the Santa Fe as he argued to change crew sizes and work rules,

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- in bucking industry norms to partner with the ‘enemy’, a trucking company,

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- in transforming a struggling Kansas City Southern into a viable north-south railroad while Class I consolidations threatened the line’s very existence, and

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- in pursuing the ‘folly’ of investing in a 47-mile railway across the isthmus of Panama.