The Strength to Rise

They say we do not know what we have until it’s gone.

As Americans, we have been wrenched from our insulated lives and plunged into something much greater than ourselves. But the love we have for our country has never been stronger than in this time of grief. The qualities of honor, compassion and selflessness—as evidenced by the outpouring of support to the victims and their families—are emerging in unprecedented force.

For the insurance industry, we have lost greatly, not only in our professional lives, but for many, in our personal lives.

“With the numbers of people involved in New York, D.C. and Pennsylvania, it is hard to conceive of anyone in America not having some close connection to [Sept. 11]‘s obscenity,” said Vince DeVargas, director-agency operations with WGA Insurance Services Ltd. in Newport Beach, Calif. “My next-door neighbor just retired as an airline pilot and frequently piloted Flight 11 out of Boston. His friends and co-workers died. I have a friend in the D.C. area whose son and son-in-law are Army officers in the Pentagon. His son-in-law escaped with no injury. His son was severely burned but is expected to live.”

The connections go on and on.

“I’m sure we’re all going to find that we’ve lost some friends before this is all sorted out,” said Don Way, IBA West president and CEO of Thoits Insurance Service Inc. in Mountain View, Calif. “It’s almost hard to get past the shock, in some ways it still seems un-real. When I turned on the television this morning [Sept. 11], I thought it was some make-believe commercial—it didn’t seem it could possibly be real, and then I saw the ‘Live’ down in the corner.”

For the media, scrambling to cover the story was also a surreal experience. Making contact with spokespeople at the different companies who had employees in the World Trade Center was difficult and sometimes heartrending. As we discussed the events, we all tried to stay in our professional roles—the journalist and the company representative—but the shock was heavy, and at times it seemed pointless to do anything but collapse in front of the nearest TV and just watch.

With all its accompanying horror, this tragedy offers a much-needed opportunity to the insurance industry—a chance to change our image once and for all. It is our turn not to be the “bad guys,” but the “good guys”—the most American of Americans—coming in to help pick up the pieces when our country needs it the most.

Yes, the losses will be huge. The damage done is great. But we are in a position, more than anyone else, to try to rebuild and make up for the loss.

In a sense, we have a duty to prove ourselves, to show that we are indeed not a faceless industry, but one that along with the rest of the world has a heart that is breaking over these senseless acts of violence.