crain

George Crain, by then a colonel, was chief of maintenance engineering at Hill AFB, Utah, in 1953-54. He was a classmate of Gibbon at Kelly Field Advanced School in 1933.

Two of their husbands: Harriet B. Taggart Mack (d. 1954) daughter of Isaac Taggart of Buffalo NY, was married to Norman Edward Mack (1858-1932), a Buffalo newspaperman who served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1908; Harriet was also active with the party for decades, and served as a delegate to various national conventions. www.buffaloah.com/a/forestL/mack/index.html politicalgraveyard.com/families/13642.html Thomas Taggart (1856-1929) was the Irish-born mayor of Indianapolis, and DNC chair: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Taggart More Tom Taggart in the Commons:

Another Bain/LOC photo, taken on the same occasion, also shows these three ladies:

See www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/2535981129/ where Harry Angstrom indicates that Crain is a Baltimore democrat. January 10, 1912, NYT, query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C04E0D8163CE633A... gives him a role in getting Baltimore as the location for the 1912 Democratic convention. He headed the "Baltimore boom" -- any ideas what "boom" means in this context? According to Wikipedia, "Robert Crain Highway is the designation given to the former alignment of U.S. Route 301 from Bowie, Maryland, USA, to Baltimore."

@ swang – Baltimore as well as Charles County, Maryland, experienced tremendous increases in population and commerce after the opening of the Southern Maryland Trunk Line in 1922 – later renamed the Robert Crain Highway after it's most ardent supporter. The changes in the economic development as a result of this highway, and other factors, have been called "transformational". Perhaps the use of the term in the article referred to the beginning of this boom. (?)