So the recent interview about his transition from being chairman and chief executive officer of a high-profile Philadelphia company to selling "hogs" - the thundering two-wheeled kind - began among the pickles and paper plates at the local supermarket.
Checking items off his shopping list, he talked about how he's finding happiness in ways that would seem strange to former corporate colleagues, after reaping what some analysts estimate was more than $30 million from the bitter sale and breakup of the company where he had worked for 20 years.
Among other things, LeVan spends a lot of time riding a motorcycle, and he is the owner of the brand-new Battlefield Harley-Davidson dealership on U.S. Route 30 in Gettysburg, where he was born and raised.
He was dispatched to the grocery store by his wife, Jennifer, the dealership's managing partner, who assigned him to cook for their staff of 27. The picnic was to show appreciation for hard work leading up to the grand opening, which attracted 4,000 people to the dealership last Saturday.
For nearly two hours, his ponytail wagging in a gentle breeze, he flipped burgers for staff and contractors who were putting the finishing touches on the 30,000-square-foot building.
His tone turned briefly bitter when he was asked about the hostile takeover waged by Norfolk Southern Corp., which scuttled Conrail's friendly merger with CSX Corp. That deal would have brought the CSX headquarters to Philadelphia and put LeVan in charge of the mightiest railroad east of the Mississippi River.
Instead, after a nasty fight in which LeVan and his board became targets of personal attacks, Conrail was jointly purchased in 1997, for a rail-industry record of $10.3 billion, and divvied up by CSX and Norfolk Southern.
Yes, there was a time after Conrail's demise when LeVan privately hoped that an offer to run another big company would come his way.
