News Currents

Miss. producers go the extra mile for their community

Meridian agents find time for defending their community’s economy, culture and architecture

While many independent agents make it a point to become involved in their communities, often donating their time to civic functions on a municipal or regional scale, some go a few steps further, reaching a statewide and even a national level of community dedication.

When the first round of Base Realignment and Closures (BRAC) kicked off under the direction of the Department of Defense in the early 1990s, Lamar McDonald of the Meyer & Rosenbaum Agency in Meridian, Miss., heard the call. McDonald knew that if the Meridian Naval Air Station fell victim to federal cost cutting, his community — not to mention the nation — would suffer a huge blow. The stakes were too high and McDonald was a key motivator in rallying support to keep the base open.

The 1991 BRAC was only the first of four rounds that McDonald and residents of the small county seat in eastern Mississippi would have to endure. The repeated experience made experts of a key group of citizens and retired military pilots who did not necessarily want to become experts in the stressful endeavor of virtually saving a local economy from federal mandates.

McDonald was on the Navy Meridian Team committee for the 1991, 1993 and 1995 BRAC rounds. “I was basically responsible for raising funds for the fight to keep the base open.”

In 1996, after three hard-earned victories for the town of Meridian, McDonald was appointed chairman of the Navy Meridian Team. It was no secret that another BRAC round was looming — this time nine years down the road. In 2004, a year before the latest realignment and closure implementation, Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour appointed McDonald to the newly established Mississippi Military Communities Council, ratcheting McDonald’s involvement up a few more notches.

The MMCC consists of representatives from each of 12 Mississippi towns that play host to a military base. Meridian also hosts the Mississippi Air National Guard’s 186the Air Refueling Wing and in the 2005 BRAC round, the 186th was hit hard while the Naval Air Station came through nearly unscathed.

McDonald and the local team of heavy-hitters didn’t skip a beat as they turned their focus and their now high level of BRAC-fighting experience toward saving a fleet of nine midair refueling planes (KC-136R strato-tankers) — and much of the associated personnel — from being disbursed around the country.

The fight paid off and in the end, after originally having been dealt a grim hand, the 186th will remain intact with modifications, while actually gaining in numbers and taking on an exclusive new mission in the process.

All of this extra-curricular activity would be a challenge for any typically engaged insurance agent but in 1991 when the first BRAC round kicked off, McDonald was 63. By then he had already put in a full-sized career, and had proudly served his community in many ways — but he had no intention of fading into retirement.

Community-minded throughout his career, McDonald served on the Meridian City Council from 1965-1973 and he was the president of the Independent Insurance Agents of Mississippi in 1994. In 1979, McDonald said the Independent Insurance Agents of Mississippi awarded him the J.H. Johnson memorial award for “independent agent’s contribution to the insurance industry.”

Meridian sustained significant damage from Hurricane Katrina. Over 1,000 homes and businesses were damaged and nearly 30 were totally destroyed.

“We were run ragged for a while,” McDonald said. “Our market got fairly tight early on after Katrina — but it maybe softened up some — especially after a year without a storm. We have accounts that have properties on the coast so obviously we were affected in that way.”

Gov. William Winter (1980-1984), known for education reform in Mississippi, appointed McDonald to the Mississippi Insurance Commission in 1980 where he dedicated four years of his “spare time.”

“At that point insurance companies had to file and have approved rates and forms before they could use them in the state. Some years later several of us that had been involved recommended the commission be eliminated and it was, then all of those functions were put under the insurance commissioner who is an elected official,” he recalls.

A youthful looking 79-year old, McDonald told Insurance Journal in a January interview that he had graduated in 1949 from Mississippi State University and had “spent some time in the Navy.” After he came out of the military, he went to work for the F.W. Williams State Agency in Meridian, a managing general agency for the state of Mississippi. He was with them eight years, handling primarily property insurance and underwriting.

Meyer & Rosenbaum was one of the agencies he dealt with at that time. Al Rosenbaum hired him 50 years ago in September 1956.”

McDonald complied with the company policy of selling back his stock to the agency when he turned 65 — but 14 years later, he is still a major producer and the company’s longest tenured employee. He said many of the active accounts that he initiated date back some 40 years.

“Al” Rosenbaum got the agency moving in 1949 with partner Lee Meyer. They were building on a one-man operation started by Meyer’s father in the mid 1930s.

“Lee’s father had a very small agency — started in 1936,” Rosenbaum said. “Lee’s sister held it together after their father died while Lee and I had gone to war.”

Meyer was sent to World War II’s European Theater as a member of the U.S. Air Corps, and Rosenbaum saw frontline action in the Pacific, piloting Marine transport planes full of ammunition into several major skirmishes, including the battle of Iwo Jima.

Operating the aircraft of the day, Rosenbaum said he flew the C-46 Curtiss Commander — a twin engine, twin hulled hulk, sporting 2,800 horsepower per engine.

“Iwo Jima was the most memorable battle,” Rosenbaum said. “I was flying transports then — considered too old at 23 to fly fighters. We would fill up the planes with para-packs full of mortar shells and then fly low over the drop points. We got shot at as we dropped the shells.”

While stationed at the Corpus Christi Naval Complex in Texas as a flight instructor, Rosenbaum also served as base safety officer. He said he discovered that an alarming number of personnel were being injured or killed in jeeps. It was then when he said he really became interested in insurance.

“I found out we were killing more people in jeeps than we were in airplanes,” Rosenbaum said. “So we took seat belts out of wrecked planes and put them in jeeps — welded them to the frames. We tried it with the maintenance crews. The senior officers liked the idea and we put belts in the front seats on all the jeeps. For that I got a presidential citation.”

Now 87, and still very active in the community, Rosenbaum said, “Accident prevention really was my forte.”

As Meyer and Rosenbaum began to develop their presence in Meridian and Lauderdale County, the duo who already held graduate degrees continued their education. “We both went to the Hartford (Conn.) School of Insurance; Lee went first,” Rosenbaum said. “I went the next term — it was a 12-week course. Licensing didn’t take anything in those days but paying your money to the state insurance department — no testing, no nothing — you just bought your license.

Rosenbaum said USF&G dominated the insurance scene in Meridian at the time: “They would not play with us,” he said. “We worked closely with the Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., which is gone now. Lee and I went to New Orleans and met with the Aetna people. They agreed if we would give them so much business per year and put in a life department, they would play it with us and give us the same underwriting that USF&G had. They were our biggest company. They had a great safety program and they were real professionals.”

Having learned the ins-and-outs of surety bonding, Rosenbaum specialized in working with building contractors, plumbing contractors, electrical and general contractors.

“It was a fertile field. Mississippi was catching up on school building. We established offices in Jackson, Greenwood and Laurel,” Rosenbaum said. “Numbers on profit and loss sheets fascinated me so, when we had all of the contractors bonded except one, USF&G came to us and said they were ready to play too.”

Now several years into retirement, but still fully involved in the community, Rosenbaum is president/treasurer of The Riley Foundation, a philanthropic organization focused on preserving the town’s history and culture while enhancing the quality of life for the people of Meridian and Lauderdale County.

In conjunction with Mississippi State University, The Riley Foundation refurbished the town’s old Opera House and the attached Marks-Rothenberg Building into a state of the art educational and cultural center which now hosts world class entertainment and varied seminars, conferences and symposiums.

“The Opera House is the biggest project we have done,” Rosenbaum said. “Mississippi State was the lead in that. It was supposed to have cost about $22 million but ended up at $40 million. We (Riley Foundation) put up $10 million provided they raised the rest of it.”

Rosenbaum said the Opera House had its grand opening on Sept. 8, 2006. “Now they are teaching classes for Mississippi State and doing close work with the community college and the public schools,” he said.

“From here we’re going to help Mississippi State increase their presence in the community and we’re interested in seeing downtown Meridian restored,” Rosenbaum said.

“We’ve got the greatest collection of pre-1900 architecture sitting down on 21st 22nd and 23rd Avenues and we’d like to see that all restored.”