CHICAGO, Oct. 24 -- William Benson Storey, retired president of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad,
died in his home here today. He would have been 83 years old on Nov. 17.
Mr. Storey returned home on Sunday from St. Luke's Hospital, where he had been under observation for four
weeks. His wife, Laura, died on Sept. 3. Since his retirement in 1933, he had remained as a director and
a member of the executive committee.
Mr. Storey had been an indefatigable pedestrian, until recently walking every day from his home to his office
in the Railway Exchange Building, no matter what the weather. Not long ago he surprised his friends by
outlasting other members of his party on a five-hour tramp through the Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico.
He was born in San Francisco, and, after graduating from high school, worked for two years in the surveying
department of the Southern Pacific Railroad as a rodman and lineman. Mr. Storey then entered the University
of California, where he studied mechanical engineering, and was graduated in 1881, when he again joined the railroad.
At his retirement, Mr. Storey had been president of the Santa Fe for thirteen years, having succeeded Edward
P. Ripley in the post. He was born in San Francisco, the son of William Bainbridge and Ellen Dean Storey.
He became in 1881 an assistant engineer for the Southern Pacific; in 1894-95 he was an assistant engineer for
the United States Debris Commission, and then became chief engineer and general superintendent of the San Francisco
and San Juaquin Valley Railway.
In 1903 Mr. Storey went to the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad as chief engineer. Three years later he was
made vice president, a position he held until 1918, when he was made Federal manager of the road. In 1920 he was
elected president. His successor, Samuel T. Bledsoe, died in 1939.
