Later Life
After retirement, Budd spent five years as chairman of the Chicago Transit Authority. He arranged the donation of the Burlington's corporate records to the Newberry Library. Though he supported many publication which chronicle the history of the Burlington, Budd himself turned down a professorship at Northwestern University, claiming his lack of qualifications. In 1949, he founded The Lexington Group in Transportation History, which holds annual meetings to this day.
Ralph Budd retired to Santa Barbara, California, in 1954, and died on February 2, 1962.
His son, John Marshall Budd John M. Budd, also became president of the Great Northern Railway, and together with Robert Stetson Macfarlane of the Northern Pacific Railway, worked from 1955 until 1970 to merge the Hill Lines into the Burlington Northern Railroad (today's BNSF Railway).
Read more about this topic: Ralph Budd
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“All my life I have lived and behaved very much like [the] sandpiper—just running down the edges of different countries and continents, “looking for something” ... having spent most of my life timorously seeking for subsistence along the coastlines of the world.”
—Elizabeth Bishop (1911–1979)
“Tomorrow in the offices the year on the stamps will be altered;
Tomorrow new diaries consulted, new calendars stand;
With such small adjustments life will again move forward
Implicating us all; and the voice of the living be heard:
“It is to us that you should turn your straying attention;
Us who need you, and are affected by your fortune;
Us you should love and to whom you should give your word.””
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)