After serving in the Army, Jack Shaw came home, worked in a foundry, then found himself at the unemployment office scanning the help wanted section on a microfiche machine. It was there that he saw an ad for what was then known as the Metropolitan Transit Commission. He applied and soon began working as a vault puller, the first of several jobs he’d hold during a 36-year career in bus and rail maintenance. Shaw retired in late 2021.

Shaw was an experienced Army mechanic who’d worked in garages during high school. The skills served him well in bus maintenance and he bid into a technician role as soon as he had enough seniority to do so. Later, he was part of the first group of technicians to transfer to light rail and spent months in classes at Dunwoody College preparing to work on the new fleet of light rail vehicles. “I’d gotten a little tired of doing the same thing on the buses,” Shaw remembered. “There were so few of us at rail that we were doing it all – changing tires on the trucks, electrical, hydraulics. The variety was really nice.”

After gaining experience, Shaw became a foreman and supervisor. As body shop supervisor, he said one of his proudest accomplishments was reducing the time it took to restore heavily rusted light rail vehicles from more than 2,000 hours down to about 800 hours. During his tenure, body shop technicians also installed plastic seats across the fleet and replaced dozens of broken windows. Shaw was quick to share credit for that and other work. “I told the team, ‘I’m a tool. What do you need me to do to get your job done?’” he said.

During his time at Metro Transit, Shaw was deployed several times as a member of the National Guard, including to Iraq after 9/11. In retirement, Shaw planned to buy a motorhome and travel, staying at military bases down south.