Vineland Life Insurance Salesman Still Going Strong At 100
April 10, 2012 by Kevin Post
| Post, Kevin |
When Theodore Krause started working for what was then the Equitable Life Assurance Society of America, the application for a life insurance policy was three pages long.
“They gave me one hour of training and wished me luck,” said Krause, of Vineland.
That was so 65 years ago.
Now the application and its supplements can be dozens of pages long, with multiple pages needing to be signed instead of just one, he said.
The minimum policy used to be $1,000 — now it’s $100,000, he said.
And the company he represents out of his Vineland office is now called AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co., part of the global financial corporation AXA Group.
The steadiest, rock-solid part of all this is Krause himself, who at age 100 is AXA Equitable’s oldest active financial professional. He is also recipient of the company’s highest honor — the 2012 National Honor Associate Award.
He said he still goes into the office six mornings a week. “I used to come back in the afternoon, but not since I broke my hip a few month’s ago.”
One secret of his longevity has been regularly swimming laps in the Vineland YMCA pool, he said. Now he does therapy exercise in the water there.
“I’ve been doing exercises every day for 70 years, and it has kept me in pretty good shape,” Krause said.
That’s also how long he has engaged in spiritual exercises.
“I started studying the Bible when I was about 30,” he said. “I’ve been studying ever since with the rabbis at the synagogue. … If I wake up at 4 o’clock in the morning and can’t sleep, I’ll study some more.”
For 42 years, Krause said, he also went to the synagogue daily to pray, but since his accident he makes it there only on the Sabbath. His goal is to get back to at least three days a week.
Mostly he enjoys spending time with his wife, Sarah, who is 101.
Life is good, he said. “We manage pretty well,” even in the worst economic downturn he’s seen since the Great Depression.
Krause got through the Depression as a farmer, but in 1947 he was looking for some extra income to pay for his daughters to go to college, so he gave selling life insurance a try.
“I went to see the neighbors and I said, you pay $5 a week and you get these benefits,” he said. “I made $100 in five minutes, as much as I made in a whole week on the farm.”
He did well selling to friends, “but then I ran out of friends. I’d knock on doors and bang went the door when they heard it was about life insurance,” he said. “After six months, I was glad I still had the farm.”
But like so many things in his life, Krause stuck with it, taking advanced courses, learning about tax laws, and becoming expert at helping his customers.
“About 90 percent of the job is servicing clients, and 10 percent is actively selling,” he said.
Krause thinks starting in life insurance would be tougher today.
“Anyone going into the business today should probably be a college graduate and have a lot of rich friends,” he said.
Actively working at 100 makes Krause unique at AXA, but nowadays quite a few Americans live into their second century.
The most recent Census Bureau estimate is that there were 64,024 Americans age 100 and older in July 2009, although only 8,758 of those were men.
Krause could have quit working at the normal retirement age 35 years ago, but didn’t think that would be good for him.
“I had a brother in law who came to lunch once and liked it so much he practically lived with us for the next 14 years,” Krause said.
After years of sitting around the house, the in-law went into a nursing home and within a few years died of a heart attack, he said.
“I realized that if I didn’t go to work, I’d sit home and watch television like he did,” Krause said.
Staying engaged has given Krause not just a long, healthy life, but a happy one with purpose.
At Thanksgiving, he and his wife sent out almost 300 greeting cards, each with a personal note, he said.
“My clients are my friends. We go out to dinner and we still send each other birthday cards,” he said. “We love each other.”
Contact Kevin Post:
609-272-7250
