PHILADELPHIA-Drew Lewis, a businessman who served as U.S. transportation secretary under President Ronald Reagan during the 1981 air traffic controllers' strike, has died at age 84.
Lewis, who lived on a farm in Lower Salford, in the Philadelphia suburbs, died Wednesday in Prescott, Arizona, of complications from pneumonia, said his son, Andy Lewis.
As transportation secretary, Lewis was the Republican administration's chief representative in a bitter labor dispute with the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. Reagan fired 11,400 members of the union for mounting an illegal strike.
Lewis later became CEO of Omaha, Nebraska-based transportation company Union Pacific Corp., guiding its merger with the Southern Pacific and the Chicago and North Western railroads.