AUGUSTA, Ga. — Adolph N. Ojard, former general manager of both the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway and the US Steel Great Lakes Fleet in Duluth, Minn., died Dec. 30 in Augusta. He was 72. While DM&IR general manager, he also served on the board of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum and was instrumental in arranging a 2000 circle trip using Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 No. 261, which traveled the length of the railroad. He was also manager of U.S. Steel’s fleet of boats that transported bulk cargoes such as taconite pellets across the Great Lakes.
He began his career as a dock worker with the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range in 1971. His father, Adolph Ojard Sr. was the last captain of the DM&IR tugboat Edna G, based in Two Harbors, Minn., where it is preserved today. Ojard became a prominent face in the Great Lakes maritime industry, serving as the executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority from 2003 to 2013 and president of the American Great Lakes Ports Association.
Raised along the DM&IR in Knife River, Minn., Ojard graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota Duluth in 1971. “I didn’t know at the time I started loading boats at the DM&IR ore docks during college that my career would end 43 years later at another terminal here in the Twin Ports,” wrote Ojard upon his retirement in summer 2013. “It wasn’t quite what I’d envisioned in my teens, but it has been a tremendous career with many opportunities, the last being able to wind it up here at home.”
Upon retirement, Ojard moved to Georgia to be closer to family.
