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At the Association’s midyear meeting in New York on March 16, 1945 Andrews announced the institution of the National Quality Award program. Two years had gone into researching and discussing the idea. Developed by the NALU Committee on Conservation and a special committee of the Life Insurance Sales research Bureau, the award was intended to stimulate all fieldmen to raise their sights to increased production and higher standards of quality service to the insuring public,” Andrews said. “We believe that not only those who earn this recognition gain valuable prestige for themselves in the eyes of their clients, but that their policy holders will benefit both form the higher standards of persistency and from the high quality of service which agents will be encouraged to render.”

Application blanks were published in the Association’s magazine in April with instructions and eligibility requirements. Applicants had to be full-time representatives of the same company for at least two years, belong to a local association and show a persistency record of at least 90 percent of ordinary business over the preceding two years. The idea was well received through out the industry. Since each applicant’s qualifications had to be verified by his company, granting this award necessitated the full cooperation of the life insurance companies. A total of 1279 field men and women qualified for the award in 1945. Every year since, the number of agents receiving the award has multiplied. It is impossible to estimate the full impact of the program, but few question its value as a positive influence for encouraging quality performance among the field force and for enhancing the agents’ status in the eyes of their colleagues and clients.

On June 5, 1944, just a few hours before “D-Day,” the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the precedents of three-quarters of a century and decided that insurance was commerce, and that, when conduct across state lines, it is interstate commerce and, therefore, subject to federal laws. Both the NALU and the company organizations had followed the case with great interest and were understandably not all together pleased with the decision. NALU president Andrews reminded the agents that at its Philadelphia convention in September 1940, the associated agents had gone on record as favoring state in preference to federal supervision of insurance.

More to their liking was the passage of the McCarran-Ferguson Act in early 1945. Industry organizations had taken an active interest in the passage of this bill. Titled “An Act to Express the Intent of the Congress with reference to the Regulation of the Business Insurance,” the bill was passed by the House of Representatives by a vote of 315 to 58 on February 15, and signed by the President on March 9, 1945. Granting an exemption from the antitrust laws to the extent the business is regulated by state law, the new law stated “that the continued regulation and taxation by the several states of the business of insurance is in the public interest, and that silence on the part of Congress shall not be construed to impose any barrier to the regulation or taxation of such business by the several States.”

The Board of Trustees voted unanimously to cancel the 1945 annual meeting of the Association. “The decision was reached,” Life Association News explained, “as a result of the prevailing order by the War Committee on conventions. The board felt that, even if the European phase of the war were successfully completed by the fall, the passage of troops and material across the continent on their way to the Pacific area would greatly overburden railroad facilities, and that the present order would not be rescinded by that time.” Naturally, this meant no meeting for the Million Dollar Round Table and other affiliated organizations, as well. As a result of this decision, for the first time in its history The American College of Life Underwriters held graduation exercises separate from an NALU convention. The eighteenth conferment of diplomas took place in New York city on September 20, 1945. Paul Clark, president of John Hancock, was the principal speaker.

Meeting at Chicago’s Edgewater Hotel, August 22-24, 1945, the seventeen officers and trustees, acting for the membership, elected Clancy D. Connell of New York City president of the National Association. General agent for Provident Mutual Life, this twenty-five–year veteran of the business had a long record of active association service. While serving a term as trustee, he had been elected secretary of the NALU by a mail vote of the board of Trustees in January 1944 to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Wilbur Hartshorn who became superintendent of agencies for the Metropolitan Life. An urbane, polished gentleman, always impeccably dressed, “Connell had very precise notions about what a president of the NALU should be and do.” Donald Barnes recalls. “He conceived of himself more as a presiding officer than as a person who put new plans into effect. He presided very sternly over the board of trustees. My recollections is that the meetings were better conducted than at any time before, because he knew Roberts’ Rules of Order, knew what a gavel was, and wasn’t afraid to use either.’ John Marsh remembered him as a perfect gentleman who never swore or did anything improper. “He was very articulate and always agreeable,” Woodson says. “He was just a good life insurance man who made an excellent spokesman for our business.”

Like world War I, World War II ended more abruptly than most expected. Germany had capitulated in early May 1945, and in early August the atom bomb brought a quick and terrible resolution to matters in Japan. Once again the nation and the insurance business faced a period of adjustment. Group insurance plans had to be cancelled as war plants closed; home office and agency forces had to be reorganized to take care of returning personnel.

The life insurance industry, anticipation the eventual end of hostilities had already initiated strategies for conservation and conversion of National Service Life Insurance. Its next step would be a campaign to set a termination date for NSLI on the grounds that it was unnecessary, unwarranted and unfair competition with private enterprise. Meanwhile, the NALU set up a Committee on Veterans’ Affairs to tie in with the publicity programs of the companies to encourage conservation of NSLI. Among other motives behind the drive was an eagerness to avoid any charges of agents twisting NSLI. “The significance of life underwriters co-operating to the greatest degree with returning veterans cannot be over emphasized.” Life Association News told the agents in May 1945. In its ad campaign aimed at returning servicemen, the Institute of Life Insurance cited the recommendation of General Frank T. Hines, administrator of Veterans’ Affairs, that the holders of this insurance continue it in force. “The insurance made available to you in the service was term insurance convertible without physical examination,’ the general told the veterans. “It is a valuable asset which cannot be replaced. Continue to carry it. If you have let it lapse, reinstate it. When you are in a position to plan a long-range insurance program, convert your insurance to permanent form.”[xxiii]

Most business organizations made an effort to allow ex-servicemen to return to their old posts, if they chose to. The NALU was no exception. In August, Don Barnes resumed his duties as director of research and was also put in charge of the newly created veterans’ affairs program. During the next year or so he would organize some 500 local seminars sponsored by the NALU to help more than 50,000 agents in their efforts toward the conservation of NSLI. That the program was successful is a tribute to Barnes’ skill in bringing local associations and the Veterans’ Administration together to show agents how to deal with the returning warriors. He was fortunate to have the support of his friend and former commanding officer, Colonel John Marsh, the enthusiastic and resourceful chairman of the special Committee of Veterans’ Affairs. Marsh, with his extensive Washington connections was able to assure full cooperation from the Pentagon.

The training sessions sometimes took the form of mass rallies, designed as much to inspire as to instruct, such as the one held in New York in December 1945. The principal speaker was General Omar Bradley, newly appointed head of the Veterans Administration. The Association’s magazine gave it full converge in its January 1946 issue:

Reaching its first climax with the huge meeting which packed the Hotel Pennsylvania ballroom in New York on December 19 with over 1300 agents to hear General Omar N. Bradley, Veterans’ Affairs program of the National Association since its inception in August has become one of the biggest activities ever under taken by the National Association and its local units.

The National Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, headed by John D. Marsh,…reports that over 200 Associations had held six-hour seminars on veterans’ affairs before the end of the year, and another 200 local units are planning them for the first weeks of 1946. This tremendous effort to equip all agents to assist the veteran on National Service Life Insurance and other problems which he may bring to his life insurance agent represents one of the greatest joint programs ever planned and executed by the organized life underwriters of the country.

Edward J. Schmuck, a former lieutenant-colonel in the Third Army, was hired as general counsel for the National Association on May 1946. A native New Yorker and a graduate of Fordham University, he had practiced law in the city until called to active duty in 1941. In the army he was assistant Chief of Combat Intelligence and a member of General Patton's staff. Rutherford had advised the NALU Board of Trustees at their last meeting of the desirability of having a full time attorney on the headquarters staff who could advise the state associations in monitoring legislation in the various state capitals. (He had also asked for an actuary.) He finally won their approval at the 1946 midyear meeting in Omaha. Life Association News reported, “The duties of the attorney, according to Mr. Rutherford, will not conflict with those of the group’s Washington counsel, Baker, Selby and Ravenel, but will enable the Association to broaden its services, from a legal point of view, to include state associations and all of its national committees.” In July, for the first time appeared “On the Legal Side,” a column written by the staff attorney to apprise local members of current legislative issues. It was to become a regular monthly feature of Life Association News.

Combined membership in life underwriters associations came to 46,174 in 1946. NALU treasurer Walter E. Barton reported that for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1946 assets of the Association totaled $180,050, the largest in its history. Nearly three thousand attended the National Association’s first postwar annual convention in Cleveland that September. Reflecting the national mood to indulge in luxuries unavailable during the war and a taste for having everything “the way it was,” the associated agent pulled out all stops to produce a convention as much like the grand affairs of the late thirties as possible. It was a time for reviving old customs and renewing old ties. The board of trustees of the American College of Life Underwrites held its annual meeting and dinner on the eve of the convention where enthusiastic reports were heard of the healthy growth of the C.L.U. program. The following evening the American Society of chartered Life Underwriters and the Quarter Million Dollar Round Table held their traditional annual dinners. Huebrner awarded diplomas in the 125 new Chartered Life Underwriters at a dinner in the Statler on the evening of September 12.

General sessions met in the Cleveland Public Auditorium. The “standing room only” sign in the lobby of the symphony hall had been posted for some time when NALU president Connell stepped to the platform to give his formal report on the year’s administration. In addition to the regular committee reports, the delegates faced a heavy agenda that included a series of proposals for legislative action. The list of items offers a glimpse at some of the problems the NALU leadership were dealing with at this time. Summarizing the highlights of the agenda Life Association News reported.

The Council members were presented with new statement of guiding principles in agency management, in regard to which they were requested to seek the opinions and suggestions of their local members and report back to the committee in order that a new draft of the statement might be presented at the Midyear meeting in Roanoke next March. Then there was the tentative draft of a new agents’ qualification bill, with similar action recommended. The report of the Sub-committee on Social Security, which placed before the membership the true facts surrounding their status under the Social Security Act, was another of these documents which required their serious attention and immediate communication to the membership. Changes in the National Service Life Insurance law were other important facts which they were required to understand and transmit to the membership. The new Group Insurance definition and the changes in the qualifying rules for the 1947 National Quality Award were, likewise, matters that called for their serious attention.[xxiv]

“During the greater part of the last decade, grim-visaged war has stalked across nearly every country of the globe,” Connell reminded his fellow agents. “The shadows of war have fallen over nearly all the homes and businesses of this great country of ours. For a period of over five years, our thinking and our emotions have been dominated by the necessities of the successful prosecution of the war. Previous to this current administration of our Association, my four predecessors carried on our work and activities under war conditions. Only two full-scale national conventions have been held in the last four years.

Complimenting the agents for their part in bringing the war to a victorious conclusion and pointing to the NALU’s agenda for the coming year, Connell concluded, “To the future officers of our national, state and local associations, I wish to address only one sentence. In the immortal words of the Honorable Winston S. Churchill, British war prime minister, “Forward, till the whole task is done.’”

Foreword by Alan Press, 1988-1989 NALU President

Preface by Jack E. Bobo, 1989 NALU Executive Vice President

Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Laying the Foundation—A Meeting at the Parker House

Leading Figures—Ransom, Carpenter, Blodgett and Plummer

Conditions Leading to the Foundation of the NALU

Rise of Modern Life Insurance and the General Agency System

Issues and Accomplishments of the First 15 Years

Chapter 2

In the Wake of the Armstrong Investigation