Denman McNear, the chairman and CEO of Southern Pacific during its unsuccessful effort to merge with Santa Fe, and when it was acquired by Rio Grande Industries, died Jan. 5 at an assisted living residence in Bethesda, Md. He was 95.
A career SP employee, he joined the railroad in 1948 after graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering; moving steadily through the company before transferring to SP’s San Francisco headquarters in 1961. He became president of Southern Pacific Transportation Co. in 1976 and was named chairman and CEO in 1982, succeeding Ben Biaggini, who remained chairman and CEO of the parent Southern Pacific Co.
He remained the railroad’s president when the parent companies of SP and Santa Fe merged in 1983 as a prelude to combining the railroads — a merger denied by the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1986, which ordered holding company Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corp. to sell one of the two railroads. [See “Santa Fe’s Southern Pacific fiasco,” Trains, Septenber 2020]. The company chose to sell SP to the Denver & Rio Grande Western’s parent company for $1.8 billion, selecting that offer over a group of other suitors including one from SP’s own management, led by McNear. Following that deal, he became vice president of Rio Grande Industries, chairman of SP Telecom (SPRINT), and a director of the SP Transportation Co. He retired in 1990.
He is survived by three sons, Denman McNear Jr., Stephen McNear, and George McNear; two grandchildren; his first wife, Susan Anderson McNear; and the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of his second wife, Barbara Stanton Gaillard McNear, who died in 2012. A detailed obituary is available here.
