By Bill Rusteberg
I’ve met a lot of interesting people over the years in the insurance business some of whom I’ve written about on this blog such as Uncle Miltie, an interesting character who practiced selling the old fashion way by simply showing up out of nowhere, traveling here, there and everywhere in search of fast and easy wealth.
Each has a unique story of their own worth telling. Take Fast Eddie for example. Eddie’s story is one that will forever be remembered in Fayette County, Texas.
Fast Eddie was a young chain smoking, hard drinking, pleonastic insurance broker suffering from a chronic case of logorrhea. When my secretary buzzed me with “Eddie on line 2,” I knew with dread it would be a long, repetitive one-sided conversation with no ending. That was back in the day when we were wholesaling insurance through independent brokers and Eddie was a regular customer.
Fast Eddie, like Uncle Miltie, worked primarily in the public sector bidding arena, responding to every RFP opportunity he could possibly find. He played the numbers game submitting as many bids as he could on each opportunity in order to increase his odds of winning. And winning he did, enough times to keep his creditors at bay.
Fast Eddie moved away one day and I lost track of him. Several years later I received a call from the Pilot Life Insurance sales office in San Antonio. “Bill, do you know how I can get a hold of Eddie? I’m trying to find out the status of our proposal for Fayette County. We bid the group life insurance through Eddie and we haven’t heard from him and can’t reach him. He won’t return our calls. Home office wants to know if we got the case.”
“No, I have no idea what happened to Eddie. Sorry” I said.
The next day the Pilot Life Insurance sales guy called back. “Bill, you won’t believe where Eddie is! I called the county auditor and explained to her I was calling direct because I could not reach Fast Eddie and I wanted to know the status of our proposal.
The auditor said “Oh, he’s here in the dounty jail. We awarded the group life to Pilot Life Insurance and we let him out during the day to do the enrollment.”
“What! That’s crazy! Why was Eddie in jail? I asked.
“Apparently, he was caught driving while intoxicated once again, his third offense, and was remanded to jail with a bond requirement he couldn’t meet” was his reply.
Fast Eddie won the business and as an added bonus got free food and housing too. Fayette County will forever more hold the distinction of being the only county in Texas to have “employed” a captive agent in the truest sense of the word.
Fast Eddie passed away at the home of family friends, Kim & Billy Wyant, on June 26, 2008, at the age of 54 years 4 months 9 days.
