Hello class of ‘77. I appreciate this opportunity to say hello to everyone and write about my life since LHS in 2,000 words or less. That’s not a lot of words. I could write that on just our graduation night alone.

But, before I tell my story, let’s raise a toast to our classmates who’ve gone ahead of us to that great principal’s office in the sky. Skoll!
I’m not really comfortable putting my personal life in writing, but I’ll agree with Mike’s offer if only to encourage my fellow self-convicted under achievers not to judge ourselves too harshly. Because, like Billy Joel, “I’ve found that just surviving is a noble fight”. Or, to quote Dylan, “You’ve gotta serve somebody”.

Despite the occasional setback, I’ve actually had plenty of successes and way more fun than any one person should have a right.

After coasting through high school, as if on a skateboard, I ventured out to Slippery Rock State College in western Pennsylvania. An hour North of Pittsburgh and an hour south of Lake Erie, The Rock is a cold and desolate place. Winter lasts from October 1st to May 30th. But despite the harsh Siberian conditions, Slippery Rock was a hard town NOT to have fun in. In fact, The Rock was once voted the #1 Party School by Playboy magazine.

In terms of scholastics, The Rock was and still is one of the top schools in the country to become a Forest Ranger; or a Physical Education Teacher, which was my initial plan. But after a few semesters of partying and hanging out with musicians I decided I didn’t want to be any kind of an authority figure.
Through sheer luck I managed to accumulate enough credits to graduate in four years with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in English & Literature. My college loan payments were $69.69 a month for the next ten years. Considering I also learned to play blues harmonica while I was there, I believe I got my money’s worth.
Following graduation, America was still coming out of the “great recession”. So, after spending one last summer as a surf bum, when fall came, I took whatever jobs I could find. These included writing for “The Clear View News”, being a roadie for “Banana Sound“, and working the late shift for “People Express Airlines” taking reservations.

Eventually someone said to me, Bob, you seem to be able to talk to anyone about anything. Have you ever thought about doing sales?
Actually, I come from a long line of salesmen. My father and his father were both in the insurance business. Two of my brothers already worked for my dad’s agency. But I didn’t want to work in the family business. I wanted to do my own thing and find my own way.

I’ll take this opportunity to make a statement for the record. Since 1969 I have broken the following bones: left collar bone, left fibula and left tibia together (compound), Right Femur broken in half, left femur broken just below the femoral head, multiple carpals and metacarpals, and just recently I shattered all the bones in my left ankle in a ladder incident while hanging up Christmas Lights. In addition, most people don’t know that the week before our senior year began, I was electrocuted by an ungrounded refrigerator wire and luckily brought back to life by the EMT’s.

With all my experience in and out of emergency rooms, it was almost inevitable that I would end up in the insurance business. My first stop was New England Life. I began selling insurance to anyone I could get in front of. Mostly newlyweds over a kitchen table, or young parents who were just discovering mortality. It was pre-internet, so I generated my leads by sending out return stamped postcard solicitations to people whose addresses I got from the cross-street-directory at the town library. I don’t know how many times I told that electrocution story, but it made me a lot of life insurance sales.
You really get to learn a lot about the human condition when you go into someone’s home. It’s very personal and can be very humbling. You see all kinds of living situations, different marital dynamics, not to mention the smell of strange exotic foods from different cultures. I would hear people’s life stories too. Some were sad and some were truly inspiring. It’s amazing what people can overcome.

After a few years, sales were going pretty well. But not well enough. I needed a steadier cash flow for things like… getting married. So, in 1984, I applied for a job at Blue Cross of NJ selling group health insurance to large employers and labor unions in their North Jersey territory. And I landed it.
That job completely changed my life. Instead of selling to mom and pops for a few hundred bucks, I was suddenly selling million-dollar healthcare plans to groups with hundreds of employees.

Not only was I making decent money, but I got to drive around Hudson County all day, in a company car, listening to music or talk radio, and meeting all kinds of interesting people in all kinds of unusual businesses. All I had to do in return was sell a few health plans.

In those years, Blue Cross controlled 80% of the health insurance market. So, getting sales appointments was as easy as dropping into some company unannounced and asking to see the boss. If they weren’t in a meeting, they’d generally let me in. If they were busy, they told me to come back. I didn’t care either way, because it allowed me to wander around these cool old factories and see how things were made.

Some of my favorite memories are of exploring the old mill towns like Kearny, Harrison, and East Newark. Or up in the Meadowlands by East Rutherford and Secaucus; the birthplace of consumer outlets. It was all still undeveloped and surrounded by marshes. There was nothing else there but old factories, warehouses and the blue-collar neighborhoods of the people who worked there.

I also had customers along the Hudson waterfront, from Weehawkin, to Hoboken and down to Bayonne. Many of the docks were rotted or burned up by then. But I got to see what was still left before they finally tore it all down to build the glass towers you see there now. It was a place that time forgot. But people were still making a living out there in those rusty old buildings.

When I wasn’t selling or exploring, I was playing golf with clients at Fiddlers Elbow where Blue Cross had a membership. Pretty sweet while it lasted.
Then around 1990 new laws affecting health insurance were being passed. And as healthcare reform became a reality in NJ, Blue Cross decided to eliminate their in-house sales force and move to a broker driven sales model. That meant I was going to have to find another job.

But then, miraculously, a few days after the news hit, the sales team was called into a meeting by the Director of Sales named Big Pat. Big Pat told us we were all the luckiest bastards in the industry to be getting fired. And he was right! They gave us two full months of warning and permission to take with us as many of our Blue Cross clients as we could gather up Broker of Record letters for.

Call it coincidence or providence, the following week I met my next employer (Jack) at the Weehawken Town Hall while presenting a renewal. Jack owned an insurance agency in Essex County specializing in, among other things, municipal risk management. He was looking to expand his sales staff and hired me on the spot, in the parking lot, to run his north Jersey benefits department.

I proceeded to bring a dozen of my best Blue Cross clients with me to the new Job. These became the foundation of my income for the next 18 years. Not only was I VP on my first day. But I got an even nicer company car. Instead of a pager, I got a cell phone, and an expense account. Plus, I was meeting all kinds of famous political types from Mayors to Senators, all the way up to the President of the United States. It was pretty cool.

But 18 years go by quickly. Things change, people change. And sometimes you just need a change. To put it plainly, I felt stuck. From a business standpoint, it really bothered me that I didn’t own my book of business. Everything I brought with me or sold became the property of my employer. And of course I had a non-compete agreement. So, if I ever left the company, I would basically have to leave behind all the accounts and relationships I had built up over those years. But raising a family was requiring more and more money, and it seemed like I had reached a financial plateau where I was.

So, in a moment of frustration, I resigned from a perfectly good career to take a job with a benefits company based out of Florida. It paid a little more. But the reason I took the job was because they promised to promote me to management within a year. I figured I’d work my way up the ladder from there.

It didn’t take long to realize I had made a big mistake. First off, I was no longer a Vice President of an agency. I was just another salesman to be used up and thrown away. The management position never materialized. Pissed and disgusted, I went and found another job, and then another. But there was no loyalty at any of those companies, no career path. After a while I didn’t care who I was selling for. I had become a” hired gun”. Around that same time my first marriage was coming to an end. Time to regroup.

Flash forward about three years, the universe sends me the ultimate love of my life, Barbara Ann. (yep, just like in the Beach Boy song)
A mutual friend I’d met at one of those shitty jobs introduced us because she thought “we had a lot in common”. And we did. We were both one of 8 children, (I’m number 7 and she’s number 8) We both loved going to hear live music and reading history. We each had a few kids and we were both just getting on with our lives after going through a rough divorce.

We got married in 2015 on the beach in Asbury Park and live on Cedar Lake in Denville. Barb works in HR for an international elevator company. A few years later, after resisting it my whole life, I finally went to work at The Vidal Agency. I sell mostly property & casualty insurance now, which as it turns out is a lot more interesting and fulfilling than selling life & health ever was. The main thing is, I’m finally working for myself. And I’m having fun again.

So that’s my story. But who cares what I did to make a living? It’s just a means to an end. It was all the other stuff I did in between my work that mattered most; like spending time with family and friends, or chasing my dreams; like installing artificial putting greens, building a skateboard park in Livingston, or inventing the sport of FROCKEY, aka Frisbee on Ice.

These days Barb and I still enjoy live music together whenever we can and of course exploring historic landmarks. But most of all we love spending time with our awesome blended family that now includes 3 grandchildren and another one on the way. I can still skateboard. But unfortunately, torn rotators have prevented me from surfing for the last 10 years.

To summarize, life is a trip. You know where you started, but you never really know where you’re going. Sometimes you get upgraded. Sometimes you lose your luggage. But we can’t let that stop us from appreciating every minute.

Like Beatle song goes, “the love you take is equal to the love you make”.

Aloha