Herbert S. Fairbank 

Tribute to an Unknown American 

By 

Pyke Johnson 

At the Dedication of the 

Herbert S. Fairbank Research Station 

June 24, 1964 

On June 24, 1964, the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads named its highway research facility in 

McLean, Virginia, the Herbert S. Fairbank Research Station. A plaque was unveiled at 

2:30 by Mrs. Francis Fairbank, wife of his cousin, when his sister, Miss Grace C. Fairbank 

of Baltimore, Maryland, was unable to attend due to illness. One of the featured speakers 

was Pyke Johnson, who had been a highway lobbyist for decades, most recently as 

president of the Automotive Safety Foundation. Johnson had been a friend and associate of 

Fairbank’s since 1918. 

Fairbank, a lifelong bachelor, had lived for many years with his sister Grace. Each year, 

they vacationed together, often in Vermont's Green Mountain. He retired in April 1955 

when he was unable to recover from an illness contracted while he and Grace were 

vacationing in Italy the year before. He died on Dec. 14, 1962, following a heart attack. 

The following is Johnson’s tribute to Herbert S. Fairbank. 

Many Americans, too many, when they think of our Nation’s Capital tend to look at it in the image 

of a single man—a Wilson, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or a Johnson. Their viewpoint then 

is colored by what they think of the individual. 

But there is another Washington. It is the community made up of hundreds of thousands of 

dedicated men and women who spend their entire adult lives, usually anonymously (some of these 

here today) working for the public good. It is from them that most of the best things of government 

flow whether it be in the fields of health, education, science, transportation or whatnot. Unsung 

and unknown to all but their immediate colleagues, their devoted efforts still help to shape our 

destinies. 

No better example of this corps could be found than the man whose memory we are gathered here 

to honor today—Herbert S. Fairbank. 

I first met “Jack,” as many of us came to call him later, on a notable day in November 1918. The 

armistice had been signed. The time had come to pick up civilian life. What was the status of the 

road program? It was from him that I learned that only 12.5 miles of road had been built with 

Federal-aid [since it’s inception in 1916], not all in one place. This was the beginning of a 

friendship that lasted through his lifetime. 

Later, it developed in many ways and through many experiences. On one occasion, we had a 
special train from Detroit to Springfield, Illinois. To see the Bates Road Tests [1920-1923], the 

results of which were to show that heavy trucks must turn to pneumatic tires. There was a little 

game of Black Jack staged that night. He protested that he had never played, but won all the 

money. From that time forward he was known as “Jack” to the losers. 

On another occasion, we were on a motor trip through the Western deserts locating the Zion Road 

[in Zion National Park, Utah] and looking in on the Indians on the Enchanted Mesa of the Painted 

Desert [in Arizona]. 

This time Jack and I were serving as Chambermaids of the desert. Chief Thomas H. MacDonald 

[who headed the Bureau of Public Roads from 1919 to 1953] was head of the expedition and in the 

evenings he roasted corn and prepared other tasty dishes as the Great Chef. Doc Hewes [Laurence 

I. Hewes, who directed the Federal highway construction programs in the 11 western States and the 

Territories of Alaska and Hawaii] used a saw to cut off huge slabs of bologna. Jack and I had the 

lowly tasks of putting up the tents and making the beds. He, at least, did his part uncomplainingly 

as he did everything in life and I might add, efficiently as well. 

I recall too that as we traveled around the countryside after the formal sessions of the Permanent 

Association of International Road Congresses [held in Washington, D.C.] in 1930, Jack’s voice 

could be heard as one of a chorus who sang lusty ballads led by Trueman Thompson. It was simple 

incidents such as this that made up Jack’s life. At home he was an avid reader and a devoted 

brother. 

As Rex [Federal Highway Administrator Rex Whitton] has noted, Herb was already a veteran in 

the Office of Public Roads when MacDonald appeared [in 1919], but never in any organization I 

have seen did two men so complement each other. MacDonald was a product of the Marston 

school of thought at Iowa [Dean Anson Marston at Iowa State College], a pragmatic engineer who 

had had long, practical political experience at the State level. Fairbank was a graduate of Cornell 

whose whole experience had been in the Federal government. Together, they symbolized the 

Federal-State partnership which has resulted in the greatest system of roads in the world’s history. 

As head of the Office, it was MacDonald’s part to appear publicly. As head of the Public 

Information Service [1927-1943], later as top man in the Research Division [1943-1955], Jack did 

the spade work behind the scenes, a role which he preferred to all others. 

There his output was not only prodigious but his vision was truly awesome. 

Take, for example, the report which he wrote, Toll Roads and Free Roads, published in 1939. If all 

of the recommendations made in that report could have been carried out in the decade that followed 

its publication, the face of America today would not have the scarred landscapes that now appear 

on many of our routes of travel. 

Thousands might be living, hundreds of thousands of others would have escaped crippling 

accidents. Billions of dollars in property damage and waste motion could have been saved. The 

planned growth of our metropolitan areas would have been notably advanced. We would have 

escaped many of the multiple burdens of taxes and service charges that face us now as population 
and traffic increase. 

All that is hindsight, however. The answer is that in this field as in many others, this self-effacing 

man was far ahead of his time. 

While at the time, the question of toll roads was more important in the public eye, actually the 

outstanding phase of the report is its treatment of the urban and interregional problems. 

The very essence of today’s urban problem is diagnosed in a paragraph which is quoted in full: 

In the larger cities generally only a major operation will suffice—nothing less than the 

creating of a depressed or an elevated artery (the former usually to be preferred) that will 

convey the massed movement pressing into and through, the heart of the city, under or over 

the local cross roads without interruption by their conflicting traffic. Such facilities are not 

required in any city for the service of through traffic alone. They are not required solely for 

the service of the traffic entering the city from typically rural highways. There usually is 

added to these streams in the outer reaches of the city or its immediate suburbs a heavy 

movement of purely city traffic that mounts to high peaks in the morning and evening rush 

hours. Movements of this latter sort largely follow the same lines as the traffic entering the 

city from main rural highways simply because the peripheral city areas and suburbs in 

which they are generated have developed along such highways. There are cases in which 

the daily “peak” of “in-and-out” city traffic exists without any substantial addition from 

main rural highways. For such cases, the requisite facility—an express highway—is in all 

essentials similar to facilities designed to carry external traffic across the city. 

Succeeding paragraphs set forth the present plight of the cities in clear language. “The costs of 

securing rights-of-way have often blocked municipal action . . . . As motorists move out of 

suburban areas, land values decay and slums arise” . . . . Finally as the Government enters the field 

to assist in urban renewal, “there is danger that these new properties will block the logical projects 

of the needed new arteries into the city center . . . . They should be planned now.” 

Typical of the far-sighted view contained all through this report is the comment on the need for 

belt-line distribution roads around the larger cities and by-passes around many of the smaller cities 

and towns. 

“Only in this way,” said Jack, “can traffic originating either outside the city or in any of its outer 

areas, avoid the necessity for going directly through the down town area and so adding to the 

congestion already there.” Such roads must be constructed of the freeway type. Otherwise they 

eventually become “ribbon developments.” 

Turning to the interregional phase of traffic movement, Jack called attention to the great need 

which existed in 1939 for a Primary Highway System. Out of the information received from the 

State highway departments and the War Department, he set up a tentative selection of a 26,700-

mile system. Commenting on this, the report says: 

The system tentatively selected is believed to include substantially every major line of 
interregional travel in the country . . . . It joins the populous cities of the United States, 

almost without exception . . . .” 

In 1941, Toll Roads and Free Roads reached President Roosevelt. [NOTE: Roosevelt had seen the 

report before it was submitted to Congress in 1939.] He read it and summoned Chief MacDonald 

to the White House. The Chief suggested that the President might well name a committee to go 

into the matter in more detail. 

The President approved and in a letter dated April 14, 1941 named a National Interregional 

Highway Committee of seven members to serve in an advisory capacity to Administrator John 

Carmody of the Federal Works Agency [home in the 1940’s of FHWA’s predecessor agency, then 

called the Public Roads Administration]. 

In addition to MacDonald, the President invited G. Donald Kennedy, then State Highway 

Commissioner of Michigan; Bibb Graves, former Governor of Alabama; C. H. Purcell, State 

Highway Engineer of California; Frederick A. Delano, Chairman of the National Resources Board; 

Harland Bartholomew, City Planning, St. Louis; and Rexford Guy Tugwell, Chairman, New York 

Planning Commission. 

From the speaker’s standpoint, the most important appointment was that H. S. Fairbank was named 

as secretary. So there was provided continuity of action. 

It was not until January 1, 1944 that the President’s Interregional Highway Committee was ready to 

report. Then, following along the general lines laid down in Toll Roads and Free Roads, this report 

[Interregional Highways] and the Highway Needs of the National Defense published in 1949 

became the forerunners of the Clay Committee report of 1955 out of which was born the present 

Interstate Highway Act. 

In sum, the Committee recommended designation of an interregional system of about 39,000 miles. 

 Specifically, it recommended the general location of nearly 34,000 miles constituting principal 

routes of the system. It suggested further an additional mileage of 5,000 miles should be composed 

of circumferential and distribution routes in and around the city. 

Here again the teamwork of MacDonald and Fairbank is shown at its best. 

It is typical of MacDonald’s recognition of his associates that he wrote in a letter to General Philip 

B. Fleming who had succeeded Carmody: “The research and writing of this report are the work 

primarily of Mr. Fairbank.” 

Enough has been said to show that H. S. Fairbank under the leadership of Thomas H. MacDonald, 

was a major factor in every major report issued by the Bureau of Public Roads during his long 

tenure of service. 

That the men in the highway service of the States recognized his unusual capacity for service is 

best attested by the record. He served as chairman of the Highway Transport Committee of the 

American Association of State Highway Officials from 1943 to 1948. He was chairman for many 
years of the Department of Economics, Finance and Administration of the Highway Research 

Board of the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member, too, of the National Committee on 

Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances. 

He participated in international affairs as well. He was a United States delegate to the International 

Road Congress in Munich in 1934 and was vice-chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the United 

Nations Convention on Road and Motor Transport in Geneva in 1949. 

In 1947, Jack received the George S. Bartlett Award, highest honor in the highway field, given 

jointly by the American Association of State Highway Officials, the Highway Research Board, and 

the American Road Builders Association. 

The United States Department of Commerce Exceptional Service Award (a gold medal) was 

presented to him in 1950. In 1953 he was given the Roy W. Crum Award by the Highway 

Research Board for outstanding achievement in highway research. 

He was the first recipient in 1957 of the Thomas H. MacDonald Award for outstanding 

contributions to highway progress. 

Like the Ulysses of whom Tennyson wrote, he could say: “I am a part of all that I have met. Yet 

all experience is an arch where-through gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades forever 

and forever as I move.” 

Let me quote the words of an anonymous writer as I close: 

The mobile American public is his debtor. His monument, still being built, is an efficient 

highway system, planned for the future and soundly financed. 

May this station named in his honor, give him lasting recognition for a great job, well done. 

On May 5, 1983, Secretary of Transportation Elizabeth Dole and Federal Highway 

Administrator Ray Barnhart participated in a ceremony dedicating a new building that had 

been under construction at the research center since 1980. With the opening of the Francis 

C. Turner Building, the center was renamed the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research 

Center.