Why I Joined Blue Goose

Author Unknown

(PMLGG George Harwood suspects the author to be PMLGG Chuck Palmerton)

 

I have been asked, why do you belong to Blue Goose? What good is it to you? Does your company benefit from you being a member of Blue Goose? Why do you continue to be an active member?

 

I suppose to give the best answer I would have to go back more than twenty years ago when I first became a member of Blue Goose. I had just changed jobs within our company from a claims adjuster to a traveling special agent. This new job meant much travel and many nights away from home. I didn’t know many of the special agents in my territory so I guess my first motive for joining Blue Goose was a selfish one. I wanted the fellowship of the traveling special agent and I wanted to get to know better those that I had to compete with in the agencies that I called upon. Most of the special agents belonged to Blue Goose so I felt a membership in the Order could help me in my job performance. I might even get an edge on them if I knew them better.

 

Whatever selfish motives I might have had for first joining Blue Goose, they were quickly forgotten when I found how great the fellowship was between all members of the Order, regardless of their business affiliation. I was one of those mutual guys, in a Pond made up of men predominately from a Stock company background (the distinction Mutual or Stock was still a competitive weapon in those days). Yet my fondest memories and my most cherished and lasting friendships come from that original group of competitors I met during those early years in Blue Goose.

 

You ask, did it help you? It sure did, but in a way that I didn’t expect. Instead of my having to seek out friendship or ask for help in the field, it was freely offered by my fellow Ganders. Thus my entry into a new job and into the field was made much easier by the members of the Washington Pond. Nowhere else in this industry could this have happened but in Blue Goose.

 

The fellowship of humanity as depicted by Blue Goose was quickly and indelibility impressed upon my mind in my early years in Blue Goose, when a fellow Gander became seriously ill while he was on the job traveling away from his home city.

 

He had developed a bleeding ulcer and was in desperate need of blood. He was in a strange hospital 200 miles from home, but when the word got out of his need for help, his fellow Ganders flocked from all parts of the territory to render aid. More than ample blood was donated, aid and comfort was dispensed to the Gander and his family and he survived to enjoy the pleasures and fruits of a full life.

 

At the time, he was not well known to me, and yet I found myself drawn into this tide of genuine fellowship. I too arrived at this remote city to render whatever aid and comfort as I could.  How the care for their fellow Gander, as expressed by all of those members of the Order, will never be forgotten by me. This sort of thing could happen in other Orders besides Blue Goose, but most certainly the high ideals of Blue Goosedom foster this kind of feeling.

 

Have I benefited from Blue Goose? You bet I have. I have been affiliated with four Ponds over a span of twenty plus years and the true friends from the ranks of Blue Goose Ganders, that I have gained, spans the length and breathe of both of our great nations. Without Blue Goose, this would not have been possible.

 

Has my company benefited from my membership in Blue Goose? I think it has. As a company manager, I am exposed to many meetings in and out of the industry and yet the one that is the most informative, the one where the pulse of the industry can be taken most effectively, is the Blue Goose meeting. Nowhere else in our industry do so many parts of our business meet on a common ground. Whether that person be the regulator, the bureau person, an adjuster, a company person of many sorts, or an agent, he or she is there and is caught up in the fellowship of fellow Ganders.

 

Need you ask again why I belong to Blue Goose?