Past ARTBA Chair Machemehl Passes Away

Charles (Mach) Machemehl, Jr., a former executive with Vulcan Materials in Alabama and ARTBA’s 1990 chairman, passed away Jan. 9. He was 87.

The cause was COVID-19, according to his obituary on the Birmingham News website.

Mach first joined Vulcan in 1968 as a research engineer. He rose to vice president of marketing and business before his 1995 retirement.

As chair, he helped ARTBA’s advocacy of what became the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991, which President George H.W. Bush signed into law a few months after Machemehl’s term concluded.

The following year, in recognition for his leadership efforts, Mach was honored with the ARTBA Award, the association’s highest honor, along with two other former ARTBA chairs Jack Lanford and Mully Brenden, and Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan and Rep. Robert Roe.

Mach also helped launch ARTBA’s Foundation in 1985 and served as one of its original trustees.

He served in the U.S. Air Force and 31 years in the Alabama Air National Guard, where he achieved the rank of brigadier general. When the First Gulf War flared during his chairmanship, he reminded ARTBA members that “our parochial issues, as important as they are to us, are overshadowed by the concerns our country has for the men and women in uniform.”

Mach was a 1999 Distinguished Engineering Graduate of the Cockrell School of Engineer at the University of Texas, having obtained his Bachelor of Civil Engineering in 1957, and Master of Civil Engineering in 1964.

Funeral services will be held 11 a.m. Central, Jan. 15, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Birmingham.