Remembering When
by
Jerry Person
Huntington Beach City Historian
Dedicated to the people of Huntington Beach
Do You Remember Insurance Man Arthur Gillespie?
One of the those things we all grumble about, but when time comes that it is needed, we are thankful that we had gotten it and that is insurance. This week we are going to look at a man whose motto in business was "Your protection is our profession."
Over the years Huntington Beach has had its share of businesses selling insurance, like Huston, Suter & Huston, and Stricklin Farmers Insurance.
There was David Jones Insurance and after a couple of years Jones took in a partner and the firm then became known as Jones and Gillespie. For this week we are going to briefly remember the junior member of that partnership- Arthur C. Gillespie.
It was on a hot summer Texas day that Frank and Ida Gillespie became the parents of a baby boy that they named Arthur and he was born on July 24, 1909 in Lorena, Texas, a small town south of Dallas. The first eleven years Art spent in Texas before the family decided to relocate to California.
They arrived in Huntington Beach on December 11, 1920 and Art attended Central Elementary School where he excelled at sports. Art would continue his love of sports when he entered Huntington Beach High School where he continued to excel in football, basketball and track.
He was elected student body president and even played the drums in a local band and when Art graduated in 1927 he went to work for the Standard Oil Company and sold insurance on the side.
Art had ambitions of becoming a lawyer and much of his knowledge of law was gained from working with our police department, but it was insurance that would occupy Art's adult life.
He first purchased a small insurance agency in Santa Ana and ran that agency for several years and even though his office was located in faraway Santa Ana, Art continued to live in Huntington Beach with his wife Muriel and his two children- Gloria and William. The family finally moved to Santa Ana where Art operated a second insurance agency.
The family stayed in Santa Ana for the next 17 years before he sold both agencies to become assistant sales manager for Transport Indemnity Co. in Los Angeles. During the two years he spent in Los Angeles, Art set up 46 district offices for the company in California, Oregon and Washington. But during this time his heart was still in Huntington Beach and the family moved back here to stay.
While here he teamed up with David Jones to sell auto, fire and liability insurance to many of our local businesses and residents. The firm was now know as Jones-Gillespie and was located at 109 Main Street and the agency handled companies like Ohio Farmers Insurance Co., Hartford Fire Insurance Co., and Pacific Indemnity with Art as the vice president of the firm and Jones served as president. Later Art became president of the Orange Coast Insurance Association.
Art and Muriel lived at 1701 Pine Street in the shadow of our current city's civic center. at Yorktown and Main Street.
The agency remained active well into the 1980s and was later located on Beach Boulevard and if he were alive today, I'll bet he was glad he moved back to Huntington Beach and not stayed selling homeowner policies after the huge fires LA just suffered.
So maybe the next time you're cleaning out your old papers in the attic or garage, you might happen to run across one of their old insurance policies, but don't faint when you see how cheap that insurance policy was then.