The Father of the Hammond-Whiting Amtrak Station

John Hmurovic
July 2025

They called him “Choo-Choo.” He loved the nickname. It was even in his obituary. There was something else he would have loved to read. His obituary said he worked to get the Amtrak station located in the Whiting-Robertsdale community. When he was living, he was called “the father of the Hammond-Whiting Amtrak station,” and a U.S. Congressman said that he “almost single handedly generated interest and increased public awareness of Amtrak services in this region.”

If you are looking for a story about a local man who had an idea, worked hard to make that idea a reality, stood up against the odds, and who succeeded in the end, then that’s the story of Don Wilson.

He wasn’t the typical hero you’d find in a story, and maybe that’s why his story is worth telling. In most ways, Don was an ordinary guy. He worked at the Sinclair Refinery in East Chicago. When he got laid off from that job he found work at the Amoco Refinery in Whiting, until he retired. He lived in Hammond with his wife, Patricia, and son Mark.

“He is a robust man,” wrote John Feehery, in the Amoco Torch, a magazine for the refinery’s employees, “with the huge, thickly muscled arms of one who has been no stranger to heavy work for most of his life.” The magazine writer noted one other trait that everyone who knew Don Wilson recognized: “His brawn is matched by a quick wit and a rapid-fire delivery that cause most who come in contact with him to think they’ve been verbally run over by a truck.”

His passion in life was trains. On any morning when the rest of his life allowed it, Don could be found walking along the railroad tracks that crossed the northern end of Whiting-Robertsdale. Usually, along for the walk was Rebel, the family’s 75-pound, half pointer, half beagle. When McDonald’s came to Robertsdale in 1979, Don and Rebel would stop there before heading out to the tracks. Rebel liked the cookies, and once they grabbed an order of those along with a couple cartons of milk and a canteen of water (all for Rebel) they were ready to go. Don would park the car on Front Street, they’d get out, and then walk along the tracks, sometimes east to the Whiting-East Chicago line, and sometimes west to Illinois-Indiana state line. Every time an Amtrak train passed, Don would wave at the passengers and Rebel would wag his tail.  

The railroad tracks were Don’s favorite place. It’s where he grew up. His childhood home was at 1435 Lake Avenue in the Robertsdale neighborhood of Hammond. That was less than two blocks south of the railroad tracks where he walked with Rebel. He said that Whiting was his “favorite place to watch trains because it’s a tremendous center for railroading.”

It's probably safe to say that since the 1850s, hundreds of thousands of passenger trains have run along those tracks. Even more freight trains have come through. For well over a century, travelers to and from Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, Washington, and numerous other cities in the east and some to the south, have either stopped in Whiting-Robertsdale or passed through.

When Don was a boy in the 1930s and 1940s, Whiting was a regular stop for passenger trains. By the 1970s, passenger service was dying out in America. The train depots in Whiting closed by that time, and by 1980 the only passenger train that stopped in Whiting was a commuter service from Valparaiso.

Yet, there was one flicker of life. Amtrak was founded in 1971 as an attempt to rebuild America’s passenger train service. By the late 1970s its leaders felt it was on the right track and were talking about finding new ways to bring more passengers onboard.

Don Wilson paid attention to what was going on.  Like any railfan, he loved to watch trains, but he went deeper into the world of trains than most. He kept up to date on what was going on nationally with rail transportation. “He is probably one of the few individuals, if not the only person, in the Calumet Region,” wrote Rick Wheetley in the Calumet Day, “who can tell you almost anything you’d ever want to know about trains.”

One thing he knew was that even though numerous passenger trains passed through Whiting every day, none stopped anywhere nearby. Amtrak’s train, called the Cardinal, traveled between Chicago, Cincinnati, and Washington, but its first stop out of Chicago was in Peru, Indiana, 119 miles southwest of Whiting. The story was similar for the Broadway Limited to New York, the Capitol Limited to Washington, the Lake Shore Limited to Boston, the Wolverine to Detroit, the Pere Marquette to Grand Rapids, the Lake Cities to Toledo, and the International to Toronto. All passed through Whiting, but none stopped closer than South Bend, or Niles, Michigan.

Wilson, who described himself as “just a plain old oil worker at a refinery in East Chicago,” found that he had more time to walk the tracks in January 1980. The refinery where he worked was on a strike that would last thirteen weeks. He found part-time jobs, including one at Burger’s grocery store at 165th and Columbia in Hammond, where he got paid $3.50 an hour. It wasn’t much, but he needed to “keep my family going.” In between those jobs he’d be back on the tracks with Rebel. It was on one of their walks when a thought came into his mind: “Why wasn’t there an Amtrak passenger train stop in Whiting?”

That was the question he asked the Whiting City Council on January 21, 1980. It was the date he said his campaign to get a station located in Whiting started. “Imagine,” he told the council members, “boarding an Amtrak train from a new Whiting station and traveling to Detroit or New York?” That was the dream he shared with the council.

Wilson could have brought that dream to the Hammond City Council and asked for a station to be built in Robertsdale. Afterall, he lived at 249 Lawndale Street in Hammond, about eight miles south of the Hammond-Robertsdale neighborhood where he grew up. Instead, like many who are raised in Robertsdale he identified more closely with Whiting, even though Robertsdale residents pay their taxes, vote, and get their trash picked up by Hammond. A newspaper report said at the time, “…he’s learned to combine his fascination with the rail industry with another great love…Whiting.”

That was obvious as his enthusiastic and rapid-fire remarks grabbed the attention of the city council members. But he didn’t rely on passion alone. He brought along a team of supporters. “For the last two years or so,” wrote Don Wheetley in the Calumet Day, “I, along with many Whiting officials and local railfans, have received weekly calls from Don concerning the latest railroad developments in the area.”

Months, years, before the city council meeting, by the sheer force of his love for railroads and Whiting, Wilson had built a team of supporters. They included former Whiting City Councilwoman Patricia Haluska, former Robertsdale City Councilman John Hmurovic, and community activist Paul Seman, all of whom showed up for the meeting.

So did railfan Jim Byrd of Calumet City, who told the city council he’d much rather park his car in Whiting to catch a train than drive into Chicago for it. Mark Entrop of Hammond was also there. He worked for Amtrak and he suggested that Whiting offer land to the rail company on which a station could be built.

Besides bringing this team of backers, Wilson also came prepared with a letter. He asked the city to send it to Amtrak and make a request for a train station to be built in Whiting.

The presentation by Wilson and his team won over the city council, as well as Whiting Mayor Joe Grenchik. Within three days the mayor had a letter in the mail to Amtrak Vice-President Clark Tyler. In the letter, Mayor Grenchik said he was also a lifelong railfan. “I will go all out,” he wrote, “day or night to help you with this idea.”

Following Mark Entrop’s suggestion, Grenchik offered Amtrak a piece of land for its station at a cost of one dollar a year for 99 years. The site that both Wilson and Grenchik had in mind was just west of 117th Street where it crosses the rail tracks into Whiting’s Lakefront Park, and where the tracks start to curve. If you drew a line from the northern end of Sheridan Avenue to the tracks, that’s where the station would be located.

“Your station would be ideal on the “S” curve in front of the Whiting Pollution Control Facility,” Grenchik wrote in his letter to Amtrak’s Clark Tyler. “Within this address lies city property along side of the recently abandoned ex-Pennsylvania Railroad tracks and if properly laid out could easy park over 100 cars.”

Whiting was not a stranger to Amtrak. At that time, it made one stop in Whiting. There was an asphalt platform and a small trailer near the intersection of 117th and Center Streets. It was a place where commuters could catch a daily Amtrak train into Chicago. The train, called the Calumet, started in Valparaiso and made stops in Wheeler, Hobart, Gary, and Indiana Harbor, before arriving in Whiting, its last stop before downtown Chicago. In those years, Whiting was the most active stop on the Calumet. More than one-third of the line’s passengers got on or off the train in Whiting. The hope was for that line to be moved to the new station.

But there was a lot of work to do, and Don Wilson provided most of the energy. He recruited person after person. “Don gave me a call one day and asked me if I’d help him with a project,” said former Hammond City Council member and fellow refinery worker John Hmurovic. “Before I knew it, I was writing letters and making phone calls all over the place. He had a complete list of who to call, their numbers, who to write, their addresses.” Hmurovic said that before Wilson called, he didn’t have a strong interest in Amtrak, “but after a few minutes of talking to him, I became a convert. He’s very persuasive.”

“He’s not the type who’ll take no for an answer,” added Mayor Grenchik, who knew Wilson most of his life. “When he sets his mind to do something, you can bet he’ll do it.”

Hard work takes advantage of breaks. Whiting’s break was that Amtrak was already thinking about expanding its market to Northwest Indiana. The head of Amtrak at the time was Alan S. Boyd. In 1966, he became the first ever U.S. Secretary of Transportation, nominated to that post by President Lyndon Johnson. He was a supporter of rail transportation, and now, in 1980, as President of Amtrak, he wanted to see an expansion of passenger rail service.  

Because he devoured any news about Amtrak and railroads, Don Wilson already knew this. He also knew that William Gallagher of Amtrak’s Route Planning Department had been assigned to look into building a station somewhere in Northwest Indiana. Gallagher was soon getting phone calls and letters from Wilson, suggesting Whiting was the best location.

While Boyd, Gallagher, and Amtrak were looking at expansion, Wilson built an army of letter writers. “Stick up for your area,” he wrote in a Letter to the Editor published in The Times. “Turn the idiot box off for a half hour or so and let’s give this thing a good shot!” His goal was to flood Amtrak with wave after wave of letters and phone calls.  

Mayor Grenchik, meanwhile, had 150 flyers printed and had Wilson meet him at the Valparaiso-to-Chicago commuter line before the arrival of the 6:41 A.M. train. They gave a flyer to each commuter. “WE NEED YOUR HELP!” the flyers screamed to the early-morning passengers, asking them to write letters to Amtrak. “As daily Amtrak riders, you can appreciate the advantage of having rail service in Whiting.” Then, the Mayor dashed home, and came back to re-join Wilson to pass out more flyers to the passengers on the 7:15 A.M. train.

The letter-writing campaign was also aimed at U.S. Congressman Adam Benjamin, who represented Whiting-Robertsdale and the rest of northern Lake County. Benjamin was an excellent politician. Just four years earlier, in 1976, he stunned some political observers by defeating 84-year-old Ray Madden, who had represented the district since 1942. Benjamin was only 41 at the time and had been a state legislator, but Madden had just taken over as chair of the powerful House Rules Committee and locally had the support of the Lake County Democratic Party and the labor unions. Yet, in the Democratic primary election, Benjamin won by a whopping 56% to 34% margin.

Like Benjamin, Wilson was a Democrat, but another trait the two had in common was they were hard workers. Within just four years, Benjamin won the admiration of his House colleagues. His work paid off with an appointment to the powerful Budget Committee, and Chair of its Transportation Subcommittee. He was in a perfect position to help Northwest Indiana obtain a passenger train station.   

It didn’t take long for Wilson to become well-known in the office of Congressman Benjamin, usually by letter, which was far less expensive than the long-distance phone charges consumers paid in the early 1980s.

Things were moving quickly. Whiting was on board, Congressman Benjamin was on board, and most importantly, Amtrak was open to the idea of adding a station in Northwest Indiana. On May 1, 1980, less than four months after Wilson appeared before the Whiting City Council, John Butwell of The Times, reported that even though President Jimmy Carter planned to make cuts in the federal budget, a new train station in the Region was “a sufficiently high priority.” However, Butwell reported, to the surprise of Wilson and others, Whiting wasn’t the only contender. Gary and Hammond were also being considered.  

Gary was going through a very difficult period with a sharp uptick in violent crime. In 1978, Lyman Bostock, an outfielder with the California Angels, went to Gary after a baseball game against the Chicago White Sox. He was there to visit an uncle and some friends. While riding in the back seat of his uncle’s car, he was shot and killed by a man later determined to be mentally insane. Mayor Grenchik brought that shooting up with Amtrak officials as he “explained the pitfalls of Gary,” saying some passengers at a proposed Gary station might be “accosted and buried like Mr. Bostock and some other people.” He also sent them a copy of Gary’s most recent crime reports.  

Congressman Benjamin represented all three contenders and wasn’t about to choose one over the other. He left it to Amtrak to decide. On June 19, 1980, their Market Planning & Analysis team finished its look at the three sites.

They concluded that Gary had one major advantage over Hammond and Whiting, and that was its easy access. The city had bus lines leading to the proposed Amtrak station site, the South Shore commuter line stopped there, and the Indiana Toll Road had an exit nearby. Hammond and Whiting had limited bus service, the South Shore line was a few miles south, and the Toll Road exit was also a couple of miles away.  

But Hammond and Whiting, according to the analysis, outscored them on most other measures. For one thing, some of Amtrak’s trains did not go past the proposed Gary station, while all of them went past the Hammond and Whiting sites. And even if Gary had a good South Shore connection and better bus service to its proposed station, Amtrak spokesperson Chris Knapton said, “Most of our passengers don’t come on a bus with a briefcase. They come in the family car with five suitcases.”

There were two factors which weighed heavily in favor of Hammond or Whiting. One was that 400,000 more potential passengers lived within a 30-minute drive of Hammond and Whiting than Gary. The second was that a new station would be built in Hammond or Whiting, but Gary was proposing remodeling its Union Station as a part of this project. That made it, according to the report, twice as expensive as Hammond or Whiting.

The report concluded that “Hammond and Whiting are very close to being equal.” The tie-breaker came down to geography. Even that was a coin toss, because the two sites were just five blocks apart. Hammond was, technically, closer than Whiting to suburban cities like Lansing and Calumet City, and it touched the east side of Chicago. That geography meant more people were close to the Hammond proposed station site, than to the one in Whiting. Even though the proposed Whiting station was less than a mile from the one proposed for Hammond, in the end, a few feet mattered. Amtrak’s Market Planning & Analysis report said Hammond was the choice.  

Before the decision went public, Gary made one last attempt to be the chosen site. It wanted the station to be the cornerstone of its effort to revitalize its downtown, and it argued that the analysis by Amtrak had several flaws. Congressman Benjamin passed on Gary’s arguments to Amtrak President Alan Boyd, saying that Gary had made a “persuasive argument for the station’s location in Gary.” It didn’t matter. Less than a week later, reporter Ronald Raposa of The Times broke the story that Hammond would get the Amtrak station.

Both Whiting and Gary worked hard to win the station. Hammond didn’t seem to care. Mayor Ed Raskosky said he was happy to hear the news, but that he did not actively lobby for the station. In fact, back in April, the Hammond City Council passed a resolution, introduced by Councilman Jerry Bobos of Robertsdale, which said that Hammond “fully supports and encourages the location of an Amtrak station in the City of Whiting, Indiana.”  

Whiting Mayor Grenchik was not happy with the decision. “I think they’re making a big mistake,” he said. “We’re not going to take no for an answer.” Don Wilson was disappointed, but both he and Mayor Grenchik quickly realized that the matter was settled.

That didn’t meant Wilson was done. Amtrak said the station would have a “Hammond” sign on it. Wilson had another idea. “Because of the station site being only a stone’s throw away from Whiting,” he wrote in another of his many Letters to Editor of local newspapers, “it appears only right to have a Hammond-Whiting sign on the station.”  He urged readers to write. “The huge amount of mail earlier in the year helped get the station. Let’s do the same for the sign.”

He contacted Congressman Benjamin, who told Amtrak officials that he agreed. “I suggested that it was a good idea,” the Congressman wrote to Wilson, “because of the proximity of both Hammond and Whiting and also because both you and others worked really hard last spring to see that Whiting was chosen as the new station location.” Amtrak approved the request. “Hammond-Whiting” would be the station’s name.  

On November 7, 1981, there was a groundbreaking ceremony. Over 400 people attended, including Congressman Benjamin and Amtrak President Alan Boyd. Don Wilson was one of the speakers. It was a festive occasion. Everyone was given a paper Amtrak conductor’s hat to wear. Souvenir tickets were issued to commemorate the day, and Phil Smidt’s restaurant, located just across the tracks from the new station, offered a ten-percent meal discount for anyone who could show their ticket. A locomotive was there with three of Amtrak’s Superliner cars. The cars were among the last ones built at Pullman Standard in Hammond before it closed the previous July.

Boyd expressed the optimism of Amtrak. “It will be a permanent station, because I guarantee you,” he said, “we are here to stay.” He also praised Congressman Benjamin. “This should be called Adam Benjamin Day because there is no question that Amtrak is alive today and is launching the Hammond-Whiting station because of the support and belief of Adam Benjamin in rail passenger service.” Benjamin, in turn, praised Don Wilson for his involvement as a citizen. “I’ve been a railfan since I was out of diapers,” Wilson told the crowd.  

Construction was on schedule. A platform was built, 1,100 feet long, or a fifth of a mile. Eighteen-thousand bricks, 890 yards of cement, and 2,800 tons of asphalt went into building the station and a parking lot for 115 vehicles. Parking was free. The station was built to have ticket agents and baggage handlers on duty.

It would have one more addition, which came at almost no cost. A concrete marker bearing the letter and numbers “B 507” was installed outdoors, on the west side of the station.

The 900-pound marker was used decades earlier, one of many along the route of the New York Central Railroad. These were mileage markers installed for the benefit of train engineers. This particular one had been located close to where the Hammond-Whiting Amtrak station was built. It told the engineers that Buffalo (B), was 507 miles away.  

The marker belonged to Don Wilson. He bought it from the Penn Central railroad in 1977 for one dollar, with the proviso that it be used to tell the history of railroading. Wilson was an active member of the Whiting-Robertsdale Historical Society and had donated it to the group. He got their permission to do so. He then contacted Congressman Benjamin to ask Amtrak for permission. Amtrak agreed. The Historical Society added an explanatory plaque, and the marker has stood there ever since.

He wasn’t done, yet. Wilson also noted that directional signs should be posted on the Borman Expressway, Calumet Avenue, and Indianapolis Boulevard, directing drivers to the new Amtrak station. Once again, Wilson went to Congressman Benjamin for help. Wilson very much appreciated Benjamin’s help, and in an earlier letter to the congressman he wrote, “I drink very little but when Hammond-Whiting station is all done, will have a bottle of beer with you.”

Benjamin contacted Amtrak about the signage, and Amtrak arranged with the Indiana Department of Transportation for that to happen. The letter from Amtrak to the state was dated September 3, 1982. Four days later, Congressman Adam Benjamin was dead. He was found in his Washington, D.C. apartment, the victim of a heart attack. He was 47 years old.

All of Northwest Indiana was shocked by the news of his death. He was popular, receiving 72-percent of the vote in his last election. He was also set to celebrate the opening of the Hammond-Whiting Amtrak station in just four days, on September 11, and maybe even have the beer that Don Wilson said they should share after the station was done.  

The dedication ceremony was pushed back after the news was received, to October 23. Indiana Governor Bob Orr attended the re-scheduled event. Even though he was a Republican who supported President Reagan, Orr was an advocate for passenger rail service and collaborated with Benjamin for Amtrak funding.

At the start of his remarks Governor Orr jokingly said he was confused about whether he was in Hammond, Whiting, or Robertsdale. In his remarks, Whiting Mayor Joe Grenchik responded by welcoming him and the rest of the crowd, “to the new Amtrak station in the Robertsdale section of Whiting.”

Indiana U.S. Senator Richard Lugar was also on hand, as was Patricia Benjamin, the widow of Congressman Benjamin. The station was dedicated in his name, and a plaque was unveiled, and installed inside the station. It read, in part, about the congressman, “…more than anyone else (he) secured, improved and promoted a modern national railroad passenger service for America.”   

W. Graham Claytor was the new president of Amtrak, replacing Benjamin’s friend Alan Boyd. Claytor recognized the congressman’s commitment to public transportation.  “He understood the complex issues of this country’s transportation system,” Claytor said, “and worked diligently to improve our nation’s transportation policy.”

Passenger rail service lost a strong advocate in Adam Benjamin. In the months before his passing, he helped arrange a project that brought Japanese engineers to the United States to consult about building a high-speed rail system between Chicago and Cincinnati, similar to the fast trains that Japan already had in place. Maybe he would have successfully moved the United States toward developing bullet trains. Or, maybe he would have had little success fighting against the budget cuts of the Reagan years, or the economic difficulties of building a strong and profitable rail system.

The Hammond-Whiting station opened with promise. Like airports, rail stations have three letter codes. The railway code for Hammond-Whiting was HMI. It was the 499th station in the Amtrak system. Constructed at a cost of $2.1 million, the optimistic voices of the early 1980s said there were about 1.5-million people within a half-hour drive of HMI, and 37,000 of them would travel through the station each year, generating annual revenue of one million dollars. With the convenience of not having to drive to downtown Chicago to catch the train, Amtrak projected the station would pay for itself within three years.

For a time, it was a huge success. In 1983, one year after the station opened, Dan Harness, the ticket agent at HMI, said that there was strong ridership despite two fare increases thirty days apart. The year-old Hammond-Whiting station ranked 162nd in ridership among 500 Amtrak stations nationwide. Based on station counts, 57,942 passengers used the station from September 1982 to September 1983. That was well above the target Amtrak had set and put HMI in the top third nationwide. Don Wilson, still cheering things on said, “The station is going to roll.” Station Agent Harness agreed.

In 1985, as many as twenty passenger trains a day stopped at Hammond-Whiting, from the 6:42 A.M. commuter train from Valparaiso, to the 10:07 P.M. train coming from Toronto. HMI was considered to be a way station, as opposed to a major terminal like Chicago. Of all the way stations in the United States outside of the busy commuter lines along the east coast, it ranked as the second busiest.

But serious problems were developing. There was just one platform and one track serving HMI, and that track had to be shared with freight trains. Amtrak trains arrived and departed late from Hammond-Whiting because they had to wait on freight trains, and freight trains arrived late to their destinations because they had to wait on passenger trains stopping at HMI.

The train traffic jams shouldn’t have surprised anyone. Before Hammond was picked as the station site, both Mayor Grenchik of Whiting and Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary warned about it when they advocated for their cities to be picked for the station. Amtrak also recognized it as a problem after the decision was made to locate the station in Hammond. It tried to correct it, but the fix was costly. On June 2, 1981, Reporter Tom Inkley of The Times wrote that the original price of the station “had been estimated at $700,000,” but that the actual cost tripled because of “complicated track and signaling to allow the twelve passenger trains a day to move freely on the Conrail freight mainline.”

Despite the signaling improvements, once the station opened the shared track caused headaches and delays for Amtrak and its passengers, and for freight lines and their customers. There was a serious congestion problem for the railroads because of the Hammond-Whiting station. To clear up the problem, the freight line that owned the track told Amtrak to drop some of its passenger stops at Hammond-Whiting.  

The biggest problem the Hammond-Whiting station faced was a national one. Amtrak’s finances were a mess. Even with increases in federal funding to Amtrak the gap between costs and revenues grew steadily through the 1990s. Amtrak needed to slash spending. The cuts were nationwide, but one of the first at HMI was the Valparaiso commuter line. It was shut down in 1991. Always a railfan, Don Wilson was there for the last Valparaiso-Chicago train to stop in Hammond-Whiting. He got out his notebook and wrote down the engine number of that train. He needed to keep his notebook handy, because more cuts were coming. By 1999, HMI handled just nine trains per day, down from twenty in 1985.

One thing that didn’t change at the station was Don Wilson’s presence. He was often there, especially on Wednesdays and on many Saturdays. His dog Rebel was gone. After Rebel there was a cat named Amtrak, who was followed by an orange tiger cat named Diesel. Don would go to the station, often with his son, Mark, and enjoy the atmosphere and help travelers with timetables. “I love trains as a hobby and my son is the same. We’re two peas in a pod.” He’d also clean and touch up the B 507 marker and the plaque on it.

By 2005, though, HMI reached its low point due to more cost-cutting by Amtrak. The Capitol Limited and the Three Rivers ended their Hammond-Whiting stops. Like many stations across the country at that time, the station closed. No fan of Republicans, Don Wilson blamed it on President George W. Bush. “He’s got money for the airplanes, but nothing for the trains. It’s terrible.” By 2025, only two trains stopped in Hammond-Whiting. The Wolverine, which connects Chicago with Detroit, stops once a day going east, and once going west.

Don Wilson passed away on September 4, 2010. During his lifetime he was honored by the Whiting City Council, which passed a resolution thanking him for “his loyal and dedicated service in helping to support the construction of the station.” The Whiting-Robertsdale Chamber of Commerce showed its appreciation by placing a commemorative plaque on the shovel he was handed after the station’s groundbreaking. Amtrak gave him a helmet, and a jacket, and when the Hammond-Whiting station closed in 2005 he was given the plaque that was installed in honor of Congressman Adam Benjamin at the station’s dedication and opening.

As his obituary said, “Donald loved his native Robertsdale and Whiting area as much as he loved the trains that ran through it and in his own way worked endlessly promoting them both.” He was 79 years old.