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Thomas Meagher ran a Chicago bus company and pushed tourism

Thomas Meagher was a Chicago transportation executive who led bus operator Continental Air Transport and later was chairman of Trans World Airlines.

Meagher was tapped by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley to be president of the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, and he served on numerous civic and charitable boards.

“He had a great willingness to listen and to work with others, and he could put people together for mutual benefit,” said John McCarthy, who worked with Meagher at Continental Air Transport.

Meagher, 92, died of natural causes Nov. 21 at his Burr Ridge home, said his son Michael.

Born in Chicago, Thomas Francis Meagher was the son and grandson of Chicago policemen, and he also had seven uncles who worked as police officers. He grew up in the Rogers Park neighborhood and graduated from the now-shuttered St. George High School in Evanston. He received a bachelor’s degree in 1953 from St. Mary’s College — now known as St. Mary’s University — in Winona, Minnesota.

Meagher served in the US Marine Corps and rose to be a captain, his son said. After about four years of active service, Meagher spent a year or so in a management training program at Sears, Roebuck & Co. In 1956, he joined American Airlines as a management trainee.

In 1963, Meagher joined Continental Air Transport, which operated buses between downtown Chicago the city’s two airports. He eventually became executive vice president before leaving the company in 1970 when Daley asked him to lead the merger of the Chicago Convention Bureau and the Tourism Council of Greater Chicago into the new Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau.

Thomas Meagher

As president and chief operating officer of the new entity, Meagher was the public face and booster of the group, and he worked to elevate Chicago as a tourist attraction, including publicizing the idea of ​​Chicago as a destination location for “mini-holidays,” according to an April 1972 Tribune article.

“When I first came in here, we were mostly selling the lakefront,” Meagher told the Tribune in 1972. “Then we started pushing the Miracle Mile and the Loop, and that’s pretty well paid off.”

In August 1972, Meagher resigned from the bureau and returned to Continental as its president. However, he remained on the bureau’s board, and he was elected board chairman in 1974.

At Continental, Meagher oversaw expanded offerings, including building a network of bus stops ranging from Milwaukee to the Fox River Valley to Joliet.

“Our biggest competitor is the private automobile,” Meagher told the Tribune in 1977. “So we have to offer service that will lure people away from our competitors and their private cars.”

In 1983, Meagher led an investor group that included McCarthy and several others to buy Continental from the Checker Motor Co. In 1993, he stepped down as chairman of Continental but remained on its board.

Also in 1993, Meagher joined the board of Trans World Airlines as it emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. TWA went bankrupt again in 1995, and as it reemerged, Meagher in 1996 became non-executive chairman of its board, a role he held until 1997.

“I like the job, but it’s taking a lot of time from my other businesses,” he told the Tribune in 1996.

Ultimately, Meagher concluded that TWA’s chairman should also be its CEO. Acknowledging that he was chair during a “very turbulent period,” he told the Tribune in 1997 that living 300 miles away from TWA’s St. Louis headquarters was very time-consuming. The airline was acquired by American Airlines in 2001.

From 1991 until 1995, Meagher was on the board of the interstate bus company Greyhound Lines Inc., as it arose from bankruptcy.

Meagher also purchased and was chairman of Howell Tractor and Equipment Co., an Elk Grove Village-based distributor of construction machinery, from 1980 until he sold the business in the early 2000s.

Meagher was on the boards of St. Xavier College, Mercy Hospital, Catholic Charities, the 100 Club of Illinois and St. Mary’s College. He also was on the board of the DuPage Airport Authority from 1995 until the early 2000s, and on the Illinois Toll Highway Authority board until 1981.

“Tom quietly helped an awful lot of people,” said lawyer Kevin Forde, a friend. “It was not unusual to come across someone, and I’d find out in conversation that Tom had helped that individual in business or in getting into school. He was just a genuinely good person and a great companion.”

Attorney Tom Tully, called Meagher “a brilliant businessman and entrepreneur.”

“He used the success he achieved to create hundreds of jobs and give back to the causes he cared most for,” Tully said. “Our city is better off because of all his efforts and everyone he helped.”

Meagher’s wife of 62 years, Mona, died in 2015. Other survivors include a daughter, Constance Cole; two other sons, Thomas Jr and Terence; seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Julie Anne, died of leukemia at age 5 in 1959.

Services were held.

Goldsborough is a freelance reporter.

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