ily, to mr. lutken, mr. Babbitt, dr. Segura, mr.
Owens, mr. Edward yerger, maj. Calvin Wells,
miss mamie montgomery, miss Wright, mrs.
matte Chambers, miss annie Cranberry,
miss mary Berry, miss mildred Brashear,
mrs. Berdie Runnels, miss mary Keith mof-
fat, mrs. Helen Rowan, mr. Roy nelson, mr.
Ran Schlater, mr. a. C. Cox, mr. E. V. Cato,
mr. J. P. Woodward—there are still more. i
remember them not only as figuring impor-
tantly in the company, but in many a moment
of warmer association—dr. Segura on a com-
pany picnic, for instance, hitting a home run.
i was privileged to know some of the la-
mar life family better because, as a child of the
company, i was in on some of the spectacular
all-star trips. So were some of the other chil-
dren. Sara Elizabeth Schlater, lilian Cox, and
i were inseparables on the far-West trip—
giggling together on top of Pike’s Peak, hold-
ing each other’s hands through Chinatown,
tripping along the rim of Grand Canyon in a
little row, looking down in. Those were the days
when there were lots of days to a train ride to
the Golden Gate and back, when the arrival of
the lunch hour each day meant the train pulled
to a stop in the middle of the desert and every-
body jumped off, with prairie dogs scampering
underfoot, and made way to a little house just
like a mirage called the fred Harvey Restau-
rant. mr. malone, from Weir, was always the
first man in.
Others in my family shared other trips—i
see my mother in the Cave of the Winds, or
riding the maid-o’-the-mist with my father,
both of them wrapped in long, Shakespearean-
looking raincoats; and my brothers in knee
pants scowling in the sun at morro Castle—we
still have the snapshots.
my father’s death when he was only fifty-
two coincided with the depression. it was at
this time in my own life that the lamar life
came to my rescue. not only with funds from
life insurance—it gave me a job. WJdx had
been organized, one of the last projects of my
father’s day, and was humming along up on the
roof of the building, right next to the clock, in a
little birdcage of a studio into which mr. Wiley
Harris could scarcely fold himself. mr. Harris
out of the kindness of his heart gave me my
first paying job. i must say it was the sort of job
a young girl considers ideal: it was part-time,
and it was vague. i edited, as one of my duties,
a little newsletter, printing for our listeners the
program schedule for the week, interviews with
the leake County Revelers, and so on. it was
the nicest job i ever had.
Man is the head of the family, woman the neck
that turns the head. —Chinese aphorism
On its fiftieth birthday i’m very grateful for all that lamar life has given me. it’s
not only the very real help i’ve had from the
company that i’m grateful for, indispensable
though that’s been. it isn’t the warm memories, just as substantial, and for which i’d not
take anything. it’s not simply the enduring
sight of the building that makes the old pride
and exhilaration my father felt, and conveyed
to me, start up in my heart. it is partly a sort
of kinship, a blood tie, the thing that is thicker
than water. most of all, though, perhaps, it is
the passionate and guiding belief my father
instilled in me of the meaning of the “home
company”—the integrity of a thing that
springs from and lives on its own nourishing
soil. and regardless of how we may grow and
come to link up with a larger world, a natural
process of development, it is the principle of
that first “goodness,” that original integrity,
that must be the root of all excellence that can
follow, and will always responsibly account for
it and bless it.
“On the Lamar Life Insurance Company: A Salute
from One of the Family.” Welty graduated from
the University of Wisconsin in 1929, working as a
photographer for the WPA’s Guide to mississippi
and publishing her first short story in 1936. She
published a collection of short stories, a Curtain
of Green, in 1941 and her first novel, delta
Wedding, in 1946. She received a Pulitzer Prize
for The Optimist’s daughter in 1973. Welty died
in her hometown at the age of ninety-two in 2001.
