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Organizer. Dominant in the formation of T. A. T., Inc., were General William Wallace Atterbury, president of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Clement Melville Keys, president of Curtiss Aeroplane & Motor Co., Inc. General Atterbury had noted that most railroads had failed to cooperate effectively with motorbus lines and he did not want the same thing to happen with airlines. For four years, he planned T. A. T., Inc., with Mr. Keys and executives of the Santa Fe Railroad, Wright Aeronautical Corp., National Air Transport, Inc. (carriers of U. S. mail), and others. "The time is ripe . . .," said General Atterbury last week when T. A. T., Inc., sprang into the public eye as a $5,000,000 corporation and a board of directors which was worth noting as a group of U. S. air leaders.
Directors: Charles Lanier Lawrance, president of the Wright Aeronautical Corp., designer of the Wright Whirlwind motor, winner of the Collier Trophy (TIME, Feb. 13), modest sportsman.
William H. Vanderbilt, son of the late Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, great-great-grandson of the Railroader-Commodore, part owner of an airline between Miami and Havana.
Fred Harvey, polo player, War aviator, young Harvard graduate, largely responsible for the building of an airport in Kansas City. He is son of Ford F. Harvey, who is president of the firm that runs the Santa Fe dining cars and 24 hotels, 41 restaurants, 54 lunchrooms along the Santa Fe route. The original Fred Harvey, now dead, father of Ford F., began business in 1876 in a shed of a depot at Topeka, Kan. His succulent chicken and his eye-easy waitresses quickly made him the Cesar Ritz of the Southwest.
J. Cheever Cowdin, a better polo player (8 goal handicap) than Fred Harvey, vice president and director of Blair & Co., famed investment bankers.
William Benson Mayo, chief engineer of the Ford Motor Co.
Harold McMillan Bixby, president of the Chamber of Commerce of St. Louis, Mo., and Harry B. Knight, of Knight, Dysart & Gamble of St. Louis. Both were backers of Charles Augustus Lindbergh's flight to Paris.†
Julian L. Eysmans and Daniel M. Scheaffer, representing the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Howard Earle Coffin, Earle Reynolds and Col. Paul Henderson, onetime assistant Postmaster General (1922-25), representing National Air Transport, Inc.
Chester Welde Cuthell, chairman of the Air Law Committee of the American Bar Association, counsel for several aeronautical firms.
Walter Sands Marvin, Thomas Eastland,
Richard Hoyt, Leonard Kennedy, James C. Willson—financiers all, members of the houses underwriting T. A. T., Inc. (see p. 30). All of the $5,000,000 issue of stock had been subscribed last week.