When Hays T. Watkins was 4, his parents noticed that he had memorized at least two dozen license-plate numbers and could match them with names of the cars’ owners. A newspaper in Jefferson County, Ky., described him as a “perfectly normal boy” with “an abnormal love for reading numbers.”
True to form, the numbers prodigy grew up to be an accountant. Less predictable was his ascent from a junior staff job at the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway to the chief executive’s post at the rail giant CSX Corp.
