Annual Meeting Recap

This year's annual meeting was fairly eventful. We said a sad farewell to several of our trustees. Trusting that they'll remain stalwart library supporters.

Paula Gold Vice President and Chief Regulatory Counsel for Plymouth Rock Assurance, has been replaced by Charles (Chuck) C. Hewitt, III Executive Vice President of Guy Carpenter.

John Donohue CEO of Arbella has been replaced by Jim Hyatt, also of Arbella. In June, Jim Hyatt became the Vice President of their personal lines group.

Philip J. Edmundson, CEO and Chairman of William Gallagher Associates, who was brought on as an associate treasurer mid-term 1989 and then as a full board member as of the November 1989 meeting, also passed the torch. Patrick J. Veale, President of WGA, has taken Phil's place (he brought up some excellent points during the meeting and we're eager to see what other ideas he brings to the board).

Though his term was not up, Josiah D. Hatch, president of H. R. Hatch Insurance Agency, has stepped down. He was a special appointment to The Board in December of 1995. The Board voted to make him a Trustee Emeritus for all of his hard and exceedingly productive work over the past 15 years. A new Trustee will be appointed to fill Josiah's place.

Other changes to the board included the election of a new Board President, Donald F. Vose Vice President of The Andover Companies. He seems eager to become familiar with all of the committees and has already sat on an education committee meeting.

A good portion of the meeting was also devoted to discussing the many Massachusetts and New Hampshire insurance continuing education classes which the library provides and the future of those classes. This included highlighting our foray into webinars with "Coverage Review of the Business Auto Policy" slated to start in January. See our website for current and upcoming class listings!

The Frank W. Humphrey Award

The Frank W. Humphrey Golden Anniversary Award was established by Maurice H. Saval (after whom our education arm is named) in honor of Frank W. Humphrey, his mentor. Mr. Humphrey was at the agency Boit Dalton & Church, later Frank B. Hall & Company and now Aon Risk Services of Massachusetts. The prize was first awarded to commemorate Mr. Humphrey’s 50th year in the insurance business and is intended to be a special tribute to his contribution to our industry by his guidance and assistance to young people entering the business.

The winner each year is chosen from among those students who have successfully completed the course in Property and Liability Insurance Principles taught by Joe Sciacca. The student with the highest grade on the national exam that year earns the award. The presentation each year takes place during the Library's Annual Meeting.

This year's winner was Michelle Mozzicato from Crum & Forster. Michelle Mozzicato has worked at Crum & Forster Insurance for the past 11 years. She began her career with C&F as an Executive Assistant, and held that title for nine years. She was promoted to an Operations Supervisor in 2008, and most recently promoted to Operations Manager in 2009.

Prior to Crum & Forster Michelle was an Executive Assistant at BankBoston for 14 years. Michelle is married with two teenage boys, and resides in Stoneham, MA.

The picture below of Joe congratulating Michelle was taken by her husband at this year's meeting. You can expect more information on the annual meeting in tomorrow's blog post!

Joseph Sciacca & Michelle Mozzicato

In This Case, You'll Have to Settle for 1,000 Words

We're new to this blogging thing, and have only had a digital camera for the last six months. . . these are the excuses we're using for why we forgot to take pictures at Friday's wine and cheese reception for the Society of Risk Management Consultants. It may also be because we were too swept up in the fun; multiple tours were given of our facility, and there was plenty of lively discussion of insurance related issues, not to mention a fair amount of wine and cheese consumption.

We did promise pictures though, and we always deliver on our promises. We've managed to post the pictures for the Insurance Professional of the Year Award Ceremony earlier than we planned. If you're interested in taking a look at all of the pictures, please just click over to our shutterfly site. The library will continue the tradition started last year and make a photo book that will be available for perusal at next year's event (we don't have an exact date yet, but it will be sometime next fall, stay tuned for more information).

The sponsor board which was located outside of the entrance to the event. These
generous sponsors help make the event possible.

The Award, it's hard to see the beautiful dupioni silk matting and the hand
lettering in this picture, but trust us, it's gorgeous.

The award winners past and present (not pictured are Ronald Mariano and John B. Conners).

The awarding of the award, by president of The Library's Board of Trustees, K. Douglas Briggs.

Each year, CAR has generously donated a portrait of the winner which is hung in the library for a year and then given to the award winner. Above, Ralph "Buddy" Iannaco, president of Commonwealth Automobile Reinsurers and 2005 Insurance Professional of the Year Award winner is presenting Richard W. Brewer with his portrait.

Again, more pictures are available on the shutterfly site we've created.

Welcome to the Library

We thought it might be nice to start our first blog post ever with a virtual tour of the library. Because we're librarians though, and not videographers, this will be a low tech virtual tour. One of the membership benefits is acess to the library's conference and meeting rooms. While many members take advantage of this benefit, we wanted to be sure that all members were aware of it. This resource is especially useful for our members based outside of Boston who can use the library as a place to arrange meetings with clients and others when they are visting Boston.

The first stop on our tour is the Joseph Moore Room (it is sometimes also referred to as the A. M. Best Room Because of the number of Best publications housed there). The Joseph Moore Room is on the main floor of the library. Among other books, we keep in this room the NAIC Proceedings going back to the late 1800s, The Best Insurance Reports for Property Casualty and The Best Insurance Reports for Life Accident and Health both dating as far back as the early 1900s. This room also comfortably seats about six people at the table or ten including the surrounding area with a door that can be closed for more privacy.

Next up follow the beautiful spiral staircase down to the Board Room. This room has many of our historical publications including, Massachusetts Commissioners' Reports dating from the mid-1800's to the mid-1960's, bound journals, and other older reference materials. This room also has some beautiful fire insurance artifacts. On the walls are various fire marks (click here for more information on fire marks -- please note that this takes you away from our website and that we do not have a special relationship with/or necessarily endorse organizations that are linked to on this website) and we have plaques with firemen, along with a lovely three foot statue of a fireman. The board room sits twelve people around the large conference table very easily, but up to twenty people can be easily accomodated in this room including seating outside of the table.

Just off of the Board Room is the room often referred to as the Sanborn Map Room. The Library has a collection of Sanborn maps for all of New England. Our maps were last updated in the mid 1960's, but depending on the particular map they may be older or newer. Formerly, updates to the maps were done by gluing any changes over the older map. They are fascinating maps to examine and are used by fire insurers, architects, and surveyors, even today. The Sanborn Map Company is still in business, though they've updated their mapping techniques as technology has improved. The Map room can be used for small meetings: like the Joseph Moore Room above, it fits about six to ten people. Often, people will use the map room if they are having a catered lunch in the board room (though we do ask that people be extremely careful around the maps).

The Library occupies the basement, first and second floors at 156 State Street. The classrooms, where we offer our continuing education classes on site, are located across the hall, on the first floor, from the board room and in the basement. These rooms are also available for use by our membership if they are not already being used for classes. Below you can see two examples of the four rooms we have available. Each classroom has a white board, a screen for a projector and a podium. Depending on the classroom they can acommodate anywhere between fifteen and twenty people.

This concludes the tour of the library for today, but, hopefully, we will have many more posts in the future that will highlight what the library has to offer, both to the public and to the membership.