STRASBURG — The Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania announced that West Chester resident Stu Jack as volunteer of the year for 2017. Jack was selected by the Friends of the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania’s board of directors from among the Museum’s corps of more than 150 active volunteers for this honor.
After he retired from a lifelong career as an industrial gas engineer with Union Carbide and its various divisions, Stu Jack joined the Friends’ group in March 2014 and began volunteering at the Museum soon thereafter. Jack was raised in Rye, New York and graduated from Colgate University, majoring in sociology. He was commissioned in the U. S. Navy, served on a tanker, in Naval intelligence and as a submariner. A self-described big machine guy, Jack has been a licensed pilot since 1999 and generally flies between 70 and 120 hours a year. He also is helping a friend restore a DC-3.
Like most kids, Jack says, he has been fascinated by trains since he was a child. Today, he volunteers in the Museum’s library and archives usually on Mondays. On Fridays, you can generally find him interpreting equipment in Rolling Stock Hall. Jack says his two favorite locomotives are the GP30 No. 2233 and the H6 No. 2846. He really enjoys interacting with children and families in the Museum, taking them on “pretend trips” by train.
Museum chief educator Patrick Morrison notes, “Stu Jack is quite simply a tough act to follow. He is consistent, disciplined and extremely hard working. He has an uncanny ability to read people, provide a high level of attentiveness to their individual questions and interests and really make a connection with them.”
Jack and his wife Pat have two sons and five grandchildren. He will be formally recognized as the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania’s volunteer of the year by the Pennsylvania Historical & Museum Commission at a ceremony in Harrisburg in the spring and during the Museum’s annual Members Day banquet at the DoubleTree Resort in Lancaster on Saturday, September 23, 2017.
