Jim Burnett died last week at only 62 in his native Clinton, Ark. – of complications from the diabetes he’d long lived with. When word got around that he didn’t have long, the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. The dying man was getting calls from people he’d worked with in Washington and at air crashes around the country 20 years ago.

Why? To quote Arkansas’ senior statesman and gentleman, John Paul Hammerschmidt, now retired from Congress, it was because Mr. Burnett was simply “the best chairman the National Transportation Safety Board ever had. He was very diligent, very studious, a keen observer.”

The list of his qualities, especially the personal ones, could go on and on. But there was one thing Jim Burnett wasn’t – the fast study who rises high in today’s Washington. He wasn’t interested on getting anywhere in a hurry, just getting there right.

There was nothing hasty about the man. His was a patient, steady, meticulous and utterly devoted approach to the task at hand. It, or you and your questions if you were in his presence, got Jim Burnett’s undivided attention. And his powers of attention were considerable. It was as if he’d been wise enough to adopt the best piece of advice Henry David Thoreau ever gave: “Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried.”

The most prominent beneficiary of Jim Burnett’s slow, steady concentration? Any passenger who gets on an airliner today. To cite only a few examples of Mr. Burnett’s work: Pilots are now required to steer well clear of the kind of storms that produce windshear, a deadly danger that wasn’t fully appreciated in the past. He also pushed through regulations requiring the airlines to use new collision-avoidance systems – on the ground as well as in the air. And that goes for regional airlines, too. He filled gap after gap in this country’s safety net.

Chairman Burnett made safety not only his business but dang near his obsession. He proved the all-too-rare kind of bureaucrat who gives bureaucracy a good name. Both BP and the feds could have used the services of a Jim Burnett before that oilrig in the Gulf sent a slick the size of Puerto Rico heading for the Louisiana coast and beyond.

The greatest tribute to the Jim Burnetts of the world is that their work goes largely unnoticed. For the best testimonial to their best efforts is negative: the oil spill that doesn’t happen, the air crash that doesn’t occur, the excuses that don’t have to be made for a failure of judgment compounded by a failure of regulation.

Jim Burnett was intensely interested in past disasters so the country could avoid anything like them in the future. He was the Sherlock Holmes of air safety, ferreting out causes of crashes and making logical deductions from them. Deductions that would be reflected in new and safer policies. All elementary to him, but remarkable to the Dear Watsons of the world who’d had no idea.

Mr. Burnett was one of Ronald Reagan’s first major appointees. Why would the new president pick some lawyer from Clinton, Ark., of all places to head the federal agency responsible for assuring the safety of the many kinds of transportation in this country?

Maybe it was because Jim Burnett had already demonstrated a talent for following the rules when he acted as parliamentarian for the Republican National Convention in 1980. He may have been a supporter of the first Bush, but when it came to parliamentary procedure, he earned the respect of all factions, delegations, and even the eccentric types who are a must at every national political convention. Or it just wouldn’t be the grand concatenation of characters it is.

From the time Congressman Hammerschmidt picked him as a young intern, Jim Burnett was a center of calm in every storm he found himself in. He was still finding out where the filing cabinets and restrooms were at his agency’s headquarters in Washington when Air Florida Fight 90 crashed into the 14th Street bridge over the Potomac with 74 passengers and five crew members aboard. All but four of the passengers and one member of the crew were killed. It was a ghastly sight. And Jim Burnett made a point of seeing it:

“I went across the bridge before they moved the bodies off,” he would remember later, “and I watched them bring every one of those people out of the icy water. I realized that I never wanted to go back to a scene like that thinking I hadn’t done everything I could to keep it from happening.”

He kept his resolution, supervising the investigations of thousands of air crashes during his years in office, overseeing the development of at least a hundred major accident reports and the issuance of 1300 new aviation safety recommendations. That’s according to the count kept by the Southern California Safety Institute, where he would one day teach a course in advanced aircraft accident investigation. The institute couldn’t have found a more experienced or devoted instructor.

Here’s what impressed most about Jim Burnett: When he left Washington, he didn’t become one more lobbyist for a special interest. He just went back home to Arkansas and took up where he’d left off in his hometown. You’d never know he was one of the world’s experts on safety in aviation, not to mention railroad transportation. He was also inducted into NASA’s Hall of Fame in 1996 for his work in promoting a fire-resistant aircraft seat. New York City’s subway system, commuter airlines, highway safety … they all fell under Jim Burnett’s watchful eye. And he had recommendations/orders to issue about all of them.

But he wasn’t one to bore you with his expertise; he just practiced it when and where it was needed. He was one of those almost unnoticed figures who just keep the system going, and keep improving it. As he did for more than a decade on the National Transportation Safety Board.

It was always a pleasure to see his familiar, rotund figure shambling down an airport corridor or squeezing into a bus at a national political convention. In the good old summertime, he favored white linen suits and a jaunty cane; he could have been a stand-in for Charles Laughton in “Advise and Consent.” He didn’t tell you anything you didn’t ask him about. But his very manner seemed to say: “Is there anything I can do for you? Just let me know.” He was one of those stoic types who could never be provoked, even by smart-alec questions from inky wretches like me.

I’ve an idea we’ll be thinking wistfully of James Eugene Burnett Jr. on future occasions – as when some high Washington muckety-muck like our current secretary of homeland insecurity assures us the system worked when it obviously it didn’t. His name may come up with some regularity. Unfortunately. And we’ll remember a public servant who didn’t think it his job to shift the blame for security lapses – just to prevent them.

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