She can speak her mind as she retired...
"The money they get doesn’t go to fix up crew quarters or these trains or supplies we can hardly ever get — it’s just cut, cut, cut,” Adams says, adding with emphasis, “I can say what I want to say because I’m retired!”
she also credits her work ethic to the example set early on by another Claytor, Amtrak President W. Graham Claytor Jr. A frequent passenger aboard the Crescent, he ran the company from 1982 to 1993 and later succumbed to cancer.
“If we could pull him from that grave, I would love for him to run this company now,” she confides. We’re sitting in the Cardinal’s cafe car after her last westbound run while waiting for the equipment to be pulled to the Chicago coach yard for servicing.
“He fought to keep onboard standards high and Amtrak afloat. I watched that man come into the dining car to make sure we had everything we needed: jelly and marmalade to sugar and sodas and food stocked to the ceiling, so we would never run out. The whole train had to be spotless,” Adams recalls. Prophetically, after the train pulled around the wye on that beautiful May morning, it bypassed the washer, so the windows would remain dirty for the eastbound trip that evening. Rather than go to the hotel, Adams stayed with the car to make the beds for her last revenue run. She’s done that for the past 10 years.
