Jay Hadley
Although I was born on Staten Island, NY, and enjoyed the hot dogs on the ferry I claim Arizona as home. I did attend Cranwell, a Jesuit boarding school in Massachusetts, compliments of my grandfather who was a "big shoot" at International Paper Company in NYC. (He started out rolling logs in Maine with the future president of IP.) After four years of boarding school I went to College in Wheeling,West Virginia. I thought I had been locked up in a pay toilet in the Times Square subway men's room. I eventually transferred to Villanova where my wild streak emerged. After throwing my biology book at the teacher in Junior year I joined the Coast Guard to see the world. I did enjoy my time in San Francisco, Hawaii and Panama City, FL.
After discharge, I headed back to Phoenix,(where I had enlisted),and crash landed in New Orleans and got a job as a bartender at The Court of Two Sisters.One day I was filling up the car and I saw a sign,"Texas & Pacific Railway." I went to work that night in a rat infested train yard and spent the next thirty plus years as a switchman, brakeman, conductor, fireman and finally as an engineer. We were blessed to have two boys; Skooter and Brian. Both are doing very well.We also have two very beautiful grand-daughters.
My involvement with Justin Wilson goes way back. His father,Harry D. Wilson,was Commissioner of Agriculture for 34 years from 1914-1948.He Justin his first job as a sweet potato car inspector for the T&P Railway in Melville, LA. I hired out on the Texas & Pacific and through mergers retired on the Union Pacific in 2005. Ironically, we could be sitting in the fanciest of New Orleans restaurants and Justin would call the maitre d' to the table. "Tell the chef he has some rotten potatoes in the kitchen." Fortunately for me, Justin had always wanted to do a children's book and so started our relationship in the late '70's.
Sadly, Justin left us the week of 9/11/01 and his death was overshadowed by the calamity in New York. I continue to work as a Commission Member on the Southern Economic Transit Authority in Slidell, LA and can be reached at had8ley@juno.com.
