People whose lives were touched by a retired Cummins executive said there will never be another like him.
Friends, Cummins executives, longtime co-workers and community leaders reacted to the Thursday death of Herschel O’Shaughnessey in Columbus.
O’Shaughnessey, 98, had a long career with Cummins beginning in the mid-1960s. He was brought to the company by J. Irwin Miller after the Cummins CEO recruited him from Union Starch, said Mark Levett, who retired from Cummins in 2015 as vice president of corporate responsibility and Cummins Foundation CEO.
“Herschel had something that was very unique. He became the friend and adviser for every CEO and COO that Cummins had,” Levett said. “That goes back to J. Irwin Miller, Henry B. Schacht, Jim Henderson, Tim Solso. He was a personal friend to them and trusted adviser.”
Henderson, who retired as Cummins’ CEO in 1999, described O’Shaughnessey as an institution.
“He was somebody who prided himself on doing things right, duty, honesty, integrity, caring for others,” Henderson said. “His main strength was he was genuinely interested in people.”
For more on this story, see Saturday’s Republic.
