Insurance in Neb. family for 100 years

It isn’t unusual for a farm to be owned and worked by the same family for 100 years. It’s more unusual for a small-town business to be in its fourth generation of the same family, an accomplishment being celebrated by Alma’s Waggoner Insurance.

“I was very close to my grandfather,” Paul Wag-goner said. “I knew I was interested in the insurance business after spending summers going out on farm inspections with him, but I thought I wanted to head for the city when I graduated from Kearney State College in 1980.

The agency was started by Paul’s great-grandfather, Frank Waggoner, in Republican City in 1906.

At the time, Frank was selling insurance with Farmers Mutual of Nebraska, a Nebraska-based insurance company for Nebras-kans. Although it has opened agencies in South Dakota, Farmers Mutual continues to be a Nebraska-based insurance company with about 350 agencies.

As a kid, Clarence went via horse and buggy with his father to sell policies and deliver claim payments. Clarence began writing policies for the agency in 1936. As an adult in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Clarence did some of his in-surance business via his single-engine Aeronca Chief airplane.

The third Waggoner generation, Clarence and Mildred’s daughter, Bobbette Backes, joined the agency in 1946. At 24 years old, Paul joined the agency in 1980, after he graduated from Kearney State College with a degree in business administration. When asked whether there will be a fifth Waggoner generation selling insurance in Alma, Paul said it was too early to tell.

Source: Associated Press