John Volpe

John (Gionne) Anthony Volpe was born December 8, 1908, in Wakefield, Massachusetts. His family-owned construction company built hospitals, schools, shopping centers, public buildings, including the Department of Transportation headquarters building and the Nassif Building, and military installations along the Eastern seaboard and in other parts of the country. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower named the former Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Works as the interim-but first--Federal Highway Administrator, in charge of the new Interstate highway program. In 1960, he won election as Governor of Massachusetts. He lost in 1962, but won again in 1964 and in 1966. In December 1968, he was nominated as the nation's second Secretary of Transportation, and served from January 22, 1969 to February 2, 1973. During his tenure, the Department of Transportation established the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as a discrete operating administration, supported the enactment of laws to upgrade the nation's airport-airways system, to renovate urban transit systems, and to create Amtrak, showcased America's transportation vitality in TRANSPO '72, and completed the nation's first definitive transportation "needs" report. He served as the American Ambassador to Italy between 1973 and 1977. From 1982 to 1983, he was chair of the Commission on Drunk Driving. In September 1990, the Department renamed the Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in his honor. He died on November 11, 1994.

John Anthony Volpe, born the son of Italian immigrants in 1908, was a successful Massachusetts businessman and accomplished public servant. He served as Commissioner of Public Works in Massachusetts in 1953, was appointed Federal Highway Commissioner under Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1957, was elected Governor of Massachusetts three times (in 1960, 1964, and 1966), was appointed Secretary of Transportation under Richard Nixon in 1969, and was appointed Ambassador to Italy in 1972. While Governor of Massachusetts, he established Massachusetts' first sales tax and helped pass legislation that extended the governor's term from two years to four. As Federal Highway Commissioner and then as Secretary of Transportation, he championed traffic safety and the Federal Interstate Highway System, and was instrumental in the creation of AMTRAK. John Volpe died in 1994, survived by his wife and two children.