Paul Herbert Banner, a railroad executive and consultant who lived in Wellfleet for 40 years, died on June 18, 2024 at the Redwoods Retirement Home in Mill Valley, Calif., where he had moved in 2022. He was 102. He had been active in Wellfleet community affairs, serving on the conservation commission and other town boards, and was a particular friend of the Wellfleet Public Library.
Paul was born in New York City on June 30, 1921, the son of Polish immigrants Abraham and Rebecca Banner. He grew up in the Bronx and attended school in Manhattan until the family moved to Joplin, Mo., where Paul finished high school. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a B.A. in economics and then moved to Washington D.C. to work for the Office of Price Administration. There he met Marian Stein, who was working as a secretary. They married on March 22, 1943, shortly before Paul shipped out to North Africa as a meteorologist for the Army Air Force with the rank of second lieutenant.
When he returned from his World War II service, Paul and Marian came to the Outer Cape for a delayed honeymoon, said their son Carl. “The place they stayed had a sign that said ‘No Jews allowed,’ ” said Carl. “My dad, being in uniform, paid no attention.”
Paul attended Harvard University on the G.I. Bill, earning a Ph.D. in economics. He worked as a CIA analyst and then for the Kefauver Committee on Antitrust and Monopoly chaired by the U.S. senator from Tennessee.
In 1958, Paul moved to St. Louis to work for the Western and Southwestern Trunkline Railroad Association. During his time in St. Louis, he served as an economics consultant for Webster’s Third International Dictionary.
In 1963, he returned to Washington as vice president of the Southern Railway. Paul moved to Chicago in 1975 to work for the Rock Island Railroad, where he was executive vice president, and in 1978 to Boston to work for Charles River Associates on the Pennsylvania Railroad bankruptcy, which resulted in the creation of Conrail. During the 1970s, Paul traveled as a consultant for the World Bank to China and West Central Africa, where he fell in love with African art. Toward the end of his career, Paul moved back to Chicago to create and operate the Iowa Interstate Railroad as president and co-owner.
He taught at Washington University in St. Louis, M.I.T., and Northwestern University.
Carl said the Banner family vacationed several times in Eastham, staying in shacks on the beach “until a hurricane blew them all down.” In 1977, Paul bought a small Cape on Indian Neck in Wellfleet, which was enlarged and became Paul and Marian’s retirement home in the early 1980s.
Paul volunteered regularly at the library and enjoyed collecting oysters on the Indian Neck flats until he was in his 90s. “He knew all the gallery people,” said Carl, and he was a great fan of chamber music, taking cello lessons from Bo Ericsson in Wellfleet. Paul and cellist Bernard Greenhouse were drinking buddies.
“Paul and Bernie argued constantly about the virtues of frozen oysters,” said Greenhouse’s daughter, Elena Delbanco. “Paul had a freezer full; Bernie found them inedible. Paul served them often. Bernie refused to eat them.
“My fondest memory of the Banners: my father was away on a concert tour,” Elena continued. “It was New Year’s Eve. My mother, wheelchair-bound, was alone in our Wellfleet home with her caregiver. Confused and suffering from early dementia, my mother told her caregiver that she was going to a party that evening and needed to be elegantly dressed. Her helper dressed her, knowing there was no such event and worrying about disappointing her. She hastily called the Banners and asked them what to do. Twenty minutes later, Paul and Marian, all dressed up, arrived at our house with champagne and caviar and made a New Year’s party for my mother. They celebrated and talked right up to midnight. That’s who the Banners were.”
Marian died in 2017 at 102. She had originally turned down Paul’s marriage proposal because of the seven-year difference in their ages, according to her obituary. They were married for 74 years. After her death, Paul insisted on remaining in their Wellfleet house alone, even in winter, often without power or heat. “We moved him out kicking and screaming,” said Carl. “He did not want to leave.”
Paul is survived by two sons, Carl Banner and wife Marilyn of Takoma Park, Md. and Daniel Banner and wife Catherine Payne of San Francisco; grandchildren Gabriel Banner of New York City and Samuel Banner of San Francisco; and great-granddaughter Lowe Banner of New York City. His youngest son, Peter Banner, died in 2021 and is survived by his wife, Donna Gilbert.
Contributions in Paul’s and Marian’s memory may be made to the Wellfleet Public Library.
