Tom died in October.
I met Tom at the Milwaukee in 1971; was being introduced around the legal department and recall being introduced to him. He was holding a pipe like it was glued to him -- stuck in my memory. Didn't have anything further to do with him until 1978 when he cross-examined me during ICC hearings, when, having been long gone from the railroad, I was testifying on behalf of a shipper. He had a long list of people I had worked with at Milwaukee, people I had corresponded with since that time, and some people I had never heard of. It was kind of a "Joe McCarthy" moment: "Do you now or have you ever known ...?" Not a single question about my testimony. Where on earth he got that information, or who compiled it, was a mystery whose answer I did not know, because I did not have the faintest idea why any of those names had anything to do with carloadings. And somebody really, really took some time. To this day, I have no idea how that information even could have been compiled.
The only person I had spoken to in the context of carloadings was MILW VP-Pricing, Glenn Reynolds, and that had been a few weeks before in preparing a statistical exhibit for my direct written testimony, which had to be submitted in advance to the railroad.
And he didn't ask me anything about my conversation with Reynolds, but about stuff four, five, six years earlier including an electrification study I had worked on.
The hearing examiner was an elderly gentleman clearly just about to retire, and may have done so during Tom's questions as he did not intervene one iota to shut off clearly irrelevant questioning, and was staring out the window.
Well, it was a bizarre and contentious afternoon.
Tom got hauled off the MILW property a couple years later after being seen consorting with David Rosenstein (i.e. saying hello), a preferred stockholder's attorney who had instigated the suit that led to the settlement that compelled the January, 1978 payment that in part caused the receivership in December, 1977 (to avoid the pay-out). Same reasoning that Bill Brodsky got fired -- some Trustee minion saw him picking up Fred Simpson at O'Haire airport -- and notwithstanding that they were old friends, Simpson was trying to organize NewMil. Such was the paranoia of the trustees in that era.
Well, the paranoia that generated my odd cross-examination made more sense in that context. These people were just nuts.
For whatever reasons, Tom asked me to look at his manuscript that he wrote, in anger, after he was fired. I offered some history on William O. Douglas that he didn't use, and thought the third person references to himself was an odd way to write a book. I thought it was hypercritical. I didn't get any thanks in the Foreward.
I spoke with him on a fairly regular basis after that, until just before his retirement as Administrative Law Judge for the Social Security Administration. I represented him personally on a couple of matters, and reviewed some briefs he wrote on a personnel matter that he had with SSA. Probably spoke to him once a month for over 20 years. He was on my list of "put through" phone calls at our office, and he always got a kick out of that -- he liked being referred to as "Judge Ploss." But he was an extraordinarly genial man, always helpful, and an easy sense of humor. One day, I could not take his call, and when I did call him back, I could tell his feelings were mildly hurt. I had a good reason, I explained, "Sorry Tom, but Federal Judge Thomas McMillen was on the other line from Chicago, and the secretary has strict orders: Federal Judges outrank Administrative Law Judges!" He laughed, "Yeah, but he's retired!!"
The overlap in conversations was not a coincidence, as Tom well knew. Judge McMillen was the presiding Judge on the Milwaukee reorganization and was prominently featured in Tom's book. It was not a flattering feature. Somehow, the Judge had only gotten around to reading the book in 1996 or so. He may have been a slow reader, but he had a quick temper. He hit the roof, and threatened to sue Tom for defamation. I've got the original letters. Apparently the description of being the dumbest Judge on the Federal Bench had gotten his particular attention. My job was to calm His Honor down while advising him that he didn't have a prayer. I did so, and we corresponded thereafter on a friendly basis. Over time he generously shared his insights and perspectives from the standpoint of the Bench on the behaviors of the Trustees and his approach to the issues before him.
The book was not well liked at the executive level. W.L. Smith refused to read it. He concedes that Ploss was one of Milwaukee's smartest attorneys -- he ruefully adds "maybe too smart." Others, more sympathetic with the idea that there were intentional actions designed to override or obscure economic data in favor of political agendas, objected to his characterization, in particular, of Curtis Crippen, which they thought tremendously unfair. Anyone who worked with Crippen knew he was extraordinarily sharp. Ploss offered a different impression in his book, and that offended many who might otherwise have been in complete agreement with Ploss's views.
There certainly was a lot of anger in the pages of that book. He wrote it as that of an outsider - one not involved with the higher-ups and the decision making at the railroad. It almost seems to come out as jealousy in the book.
Other than that I found it be a fascinating look at the Milwaukee Road. I also read that he was involved with some civil rights business. What was the deal there?
solzrules wrote: There certainly was a lot of anger in the pages of that book. He wrote it as that of an outsider - one not involved with the higher-ups and the decision making at the railroad. It almost seems to come out as jealousy in the book. Other than that I found it be a fascinating look at the Milwaukee Road. I also read that he was involved with some civil rights business. What was the deal there?
Well, at a railroad, you do your job, and its not a democracy: Tom carried out instructions from higher up, without the ability to offer his views. That's always frustrating to a well-educated, very smart guy; esp one with a strong set of principles and you see incompetence in so many things around you. He was bitter, no doubt. You see in the book his reason for going to work at the Milwaukee -- it was the "doer" -- it was going somewhere -- it had done things through legal process that had vastly expanded its markets. It had successfully manipulated mergers around it to benefit itself even more than the merging railroads. Milwaukee had done some extraordinary things, and that is what led Ploss to sign on. All that happened under Curtis Crippen. Tom handled the Chicago transit handover, the locomotive purchases there [his reward: "good job, here, take a quarter and get a cup of coffee"]; the Louisville Entry conditions. He was in the middle of some big stuff.
Then Quinn came back from the Burlington Northern. Then he hired Smith from the Burlington Northern. Then Smith hired Reynolds from the Burlington Northern. Then Smith hired Paul Cruikshank -- indirectly from the Burlington Northern -- to put in as VP Operations after he had just appointed Marty Garelick as VP Operations. And he didn't want to demote Marty, so he made Paul VP -- Operations and Maintenance. Over Marty. And Paul was a bull in a china shop who had expressed to Ploss years earlier a personal contempt for the Milwaukee Road. And I think highly of all of the named gentlemen, but that was Tom's view.
Ploss saw all this happen after 1972, and his own professional goals of being with a dynamic gung ho railroad, and part of it, evaporated before his eyes. Literally, in the legal briefs he was forced to file. As the Trustee attempted to put together the argument for abandoning the PCE, it was too much for Tom; the arguments were simply false, and he was finally unwilling to put his name to them. An attorney has a responsibility under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 11 to properly represent facts, and the abandonment proceedings were stretching the rule beyond recognition.
Tom was a dedicated civil rights advocate -- an archetype Wisconsin Progressive. It has been a long, long time since I talked with him about some of his volunteer work during the 1960s, and I no longer recall the details.
Does anybody know the whereabouts of Thomas Ploss's daughter, Ariel?
Regards,
Fred M. Cain
MichaelSol solzrules wrote: There certainly was a lot of anger in the pages of that book. He wrote it as that of an outsider - one not involved with the higher-ups and the decision making at the railroad. It almost seems to come out as jealousy in the book. Other than that I found it be a fascinating look at the Milwaukee Road. I also read that he was involved with some civil rights business. What was the deal there? Well, at a railroad, you do your job, and its not a democracy: Tom carried out instructions from higher up, without the ability to offer his views. That's always frustrating to a well-educated, very smart guy; esp one with a strong set of principles and you see incompetence in so many things around you. He was bitter, no doubt. You see in the book his reason for going to work at the Milwaukee -- it was the "doer" -- it was going somewhere -- it had done things through legal process that had vastly expanded its markets. It had successfully manipulated mergers around it to benefit itself even more than the merging railroads. Milwaukee had done some extraordinary things, and that is what led Ploss to sign on. All that happened under Curtis Crippen. Tom handled the Chicago transit handover, the locomotive purchases there [his reward: "good job, here, take a quarter and get a cup of coffee"]; the Louisville Entry conditions. He was in the middle of some big stuff. Then Quinn came back from the Burlington Northern. Then he hired Smith from the Burlington Northern. Then Smith hired Reynolds from the Burlington Northern. Then Smith hired Paul Cruikshank -- indirectly from the Burlington Northern -- to put in as VP Operations after he had just appointed Marty Garelick as VP Operations. And he didn't want to demote Marty, so he made Paul VP -- Operations and Maintenance. Over Marty. And Paul was a bull in a china shop who had expressed to Ploss years earlier a personal contempt for the Milwaukee Road. And I think highly of all of the named gentlemen, but that was Tom's view. Ploss saw all this happen after 1972, and his own professional goals of being with a dynamic gung ho railroad, and part of it, evaporated before his eyes. Literally, in the legal briefs he was forced to file. As the Trustee attempted to put together the argument for abandoning the PCE, it was too much for Tom; the arguments were simply false, and he was finally unwilling to put his name to them. An attorney has a responsibility under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 11 to properly represent facts, and the abandonment proceedings were stretching the rule beyond recognition. Tom was a dedicated civil rights advocate -- an archetype Wisconsin Progressive. It has been a long, long time since I talked with him about some of his volunteer work during the 1960s, and I no longer recall the details.
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