A Piece of the Rock
My mother recently retired after a lengthy and fulfilling career in the insurance industry. Her resume was beyond impressive, but even more impressive is the lasting friendships she made along the way. Now she can spend the rest of her life relaxing, and helping other people relax as a very accomplished travel agent. The full speech is transcribed below.
First of all, we just want to thank everyone for venturing out in these crazy and uncertain times to celebrate the career and recent retirement of my mom, Lori. I know she appreciates it and all of you very, very much. A 44 year career at that, and 40 with one company alone. But if you take away all the vacations she’s been on, I think it probably only works out to like 10 or 15 years of actual work.
It’s hard to overstate just how much of an accomplishment 40 years with one company is, especially in today’s world, and ESPECIALLY in the cutthroat industry of insurance. By comparison, in my short 14-year career I’ve already worked for more companies than my mom did in her 44 years. It’s really impressive. She started in the mail room at Prudential when she was 19 years old in 1976. 1976! Jimmy Carter still had a peanut farm in 1976! She slowly worked her way up the ranks of Prudential, and by the time she finished her career as a Claims Manager, she had dozens of people all over the world reporting to her.
My mom’s tenure at Prudential can be summed up in one word: friendships. She was able to survive and thrive for so long by being a friendly face, building lasting relationships, and making lifelong memories with the people she’s worked with. To this day she still does a PRUPAC reunion every year; PRUPAC hasn’t even been around since 2003.
Did everyone in here know that my mom and I both graduated college the same year? 2006. My mom went to night school after work for years while I was a kid, just so she could get her degree. She would work all day, and two days a week she would have my grandmother, may she rest in peace, watch me after work so she could go to her classes. Single mom, full time job, school at night. So we can all joke about her lavish travel agent lifestyle, but no one can say that she wasn’t a hard worker. The amount she has provided for me, and now my growing family, could never be repaid.
Anyone who knows me can see my mom’s influence on my life, maybe most notably on my career. Work/life balance is the most important thing in a job to me, and no one can convince me otherwise. Where do you think I learned that from? I constantly get comments that I’m always taking off, I get so many vacation days, I should feel bad for taking paternity leave to spend bonding time with my children. Why? Where is that going to get me? Life is happening now; it doesn’t wait for you to retire. Skip the meeting, take the vacation, the work is always going to be there when you get back.
Who here besides my mom knows what Prudential’s logo is? That’s right… the Rock of Gibraltar. For those of you who don’t know what that is… the Rock of Gibraltar is a huge peninsula on the southern tip of Spain that acts as sort of an entranceway to the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean.
The inspiration for the logo actually came from a much smaller rock formation right here in New Jersey. The story goes that in 1890 an executive from Prudential’s advertising agency was riding a train from New York to Prudential’s headquarters in Newark, looked out the window around Secaucus and saw Snake Hill, now known as Laurel Hill. To that ad exec, a rock such as Snake Hill, and on a much larger scale the one that towers over Gibraltar, represents strength, stability, and security. It’s always been there… and it’s always gonna be there.
So you can see why it’s so fitting that my mom spent 4 decades at Prudential. She is truly the rock of our family. She’s always been there for us, she’s been strong when we’ve been weak, and is a security blanket; especially now that grandkids are involved of course. And now, just like the rock of Gibraltar, she’s probably gonna spend the rest of her days sitting in the middle of a tropical sea.
Cheers and congrats to my mom on a job well done. You’ve earned every bit of retirement, and we all know that you will enjoy it to its fullest. Now everyone book a vacation!
