I probably have seen the movie Fiddler on the Roof half a dozen times. Along with Guys and Dolls, that great Damon Runyan tale about Nathan Detroit and the Boys, it is one of my favorite musicals. It is not the song “Sunrise, Sunset” that I like, however, it is the opening theme that repeats throughout the play, where Tevya cries out, “Tradition! Tradition!”

A wonderful thing is tradition. In December, we tend to think a lot about traditions.

This past spring, your resident image-smasher again had an opportunity to conduct an eight-week seminar at Emory University, called 21st Century Ethics. Ethics in the 21st century are no different than ethics in any other century. It often boils down to determining the most responsible option from among several available options, generally the one that will do the least harm. Everyone has his own definition, of course.

One of the things we discuss is the ethics of change. Change is universal, impossible to avoid, and usually quite necessary. While most change is good, however, some change is irresponsible and does harm. That is where the ethics issue gets involved. When it comes to behavior, it is as the Rev. Canon John Mark Wiggers recently said, “When I say to my kids, 'Things have got to change around here,' I'm not thinking about my changing!” It is that other guy we want to change. How many wives or husbands — or bosses — have met defeat in that little project?

Vocational Traditions

Ethical traditions are common in many professions. All physicians traditionally recite the Hippocratic Oath upon receiving their medical degrees. “I will do no harm,” they pledge. “To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug, nor give advice which may cause his death.” Old Hippocrates had lots of good medicines, narcotics among them, but he never foresaw the abilities of modern medicine to keep the body alive when the patient was already dead. Presumably the ethical question one has to ask is, “Who, or what, is the patient?”

By tradition, attorneys wore robes and perukes (wigs) in court, just as many clergy still wear clerical collars. Only judges wear robes in American courts, but the wigs are still common in the courts of other nations. We associate dress with ethical behavior.

Military traditions are well known. Not only are there uniforms and the salute, there are the bugle calls, the ceremonies and formations and marches, songs and hymns that add to the glamour of a military career. Similar traditions exist in other services, such as the police and the fire service. Every funeral for a policeman or fireman killed in the line of duty will have a bagpiper, whether the deceased was Irish or Scottish or something else entirely. Tradition.

By tradition, Congress opens each day with a prayer and, by tradition, flags are lowered to half-staff if a world leader dies or a disaster occurs. By tradition, there will be a Christmas tree at the White House this month, and an Easter Egg hunt in the spring.

Easter eggs? Tradition again, from old Teutonic mythology: the goddess, Estra, from whom we derive the words Easter and estrogen, was a large bird. She got mad at her mate and changed him into a rabbit. Every year on the Feast of Estra that rabbit would make a nest and collect eggs to put in it. Moral? Do not let your mate get mad at you. That can be a good tradition. (Ethical, too.)

Topping Out

Those of us residing in any fairly good-sized town will undoubtedly have witnessed a tradition in the building construction industry: the topping out of a newly constructed building. Up there, five, six, 60, or 100 stories above the street, when the initial framing of the building is complete, will be an evergreen tree. Tradition, reported Walter Woods in a column for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on April 9, 2005. He described a ceremony that had taken place 41 stories above Peachtree Street at the new King & Spalding Building. (K& S is a leading Atlanta/Washington law firm with which many state and federal government officials have been associated.) After placing “a tiny evergreen tree on the roof of the tallest skyscraper to rise (in Atlanta) in a decade, hundreds of hard hats lined up to eat pork barbecue and coleslaw, win power tools or DVD players in a raffle, and take the rest of the day off.”

Woods explained that the celebration that accompanies the completion of the ironwork on any new building is an Old Country tradition with “pagan roots,” like those of the Christmas tree or that Easter bunny. “Construction is an old, superstitious industry,” he wrote. “Work sites buzz with folklore, old wives tales and customs — like the topping-out ceremony — that pass from job to job and generation to generation.”

For example, as with most tall buildings, the K&S Building has no 13th floor. Unlucky. “Some builders ink their names on the last steel beam of a structure's top floor. On job sites for Catholic schools, churches, and hospitals, builders will place a sacrament under the foundation to bless the structure.”

He reports that the guy who runs the construction elevator is always the “unofficial money lender for the other workers,” and that he also is the one who organizes the regular football pools. Apparently, immigrants who traditionally displayed a tree branch on a completed building “to honor the trees felled for the structure” brought the topping-out ceremony to North America from Scandinavia. Topping out, said Woods, “means that the most dangerous part of the job is done and, hopefully, you're celebrating that no one's been hurt or killed.” One person was killed in the construction of the Atlanta Olympic Stadium (now known as Turner Field), and a moment of silence was held at its topping-out ceremony.

Danger, the Common Element

What is a common denominator among vocations that have traditions such as those of construction, the military, or police and fire services? One is that there is a high degree of danger in what they do, and a good many — unfortunately, far too many — of those entering the vocations will leave in coffins, becoming workers' compensation statistics.

At one time, there were many industries with rituals and traditions. Certainly, the stone masons come to mind; the legacy of those traditions is world-wide freemasonry, discussed to some extent in the best-selling novel by Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code. Masonry played a large part in American history, especially in the 19th century, as depicted in the recent film, National Treasure. As with their counterparts the ironworkers, stone masons working high on the walls of tall buildings or Gothic cathedrals were exposed constantly to dangers. Railroaders, sailors in the merchant marine, steel workers, machine and auto assemblers, and early aviators all had traditions, customs, and superstitions. No one required the locomotive engineer to wear bib overalls and a blue-and-white striped cloth cap. Tradition. Today a leather aviator jacket is high fashion. It, too, was once just tradition.

Insurance Traditions

As an insurance historian, your writer has searched for similar traditions among those of us who deal in the losses of our policyholders. There are very few, but one or two of them are related to danger. Most of these are associated with the Underwriters at Lloyd's of London, where many of our ideas about undertaking serious risk originated.

Traditionally, the syndicates that write at Lloyd's operate from booths on the trading floor, where the brokers come and visit, hoping to get a percentage of each risk accepted by the underwriter. Only the broker is allowed on the floor to meet with the underwriter. The insured may meet the broker or, perhaps, even the underwriter in The Captain's Room, a coffee shop in the New Lloyds. It is reminiscent of when Edward Loyd (yes, just one “l” in his name) operated a London coffeehouse where sea captains and shippers met with Lombardian risk sellers who would agree to “underwriter” part of the risk for a fee.

By tradition, whenever there is any major news, the underwriters are alerted by the ringing of a bell, salvaged in 1859 from a French frigate, La Lutine, that was sunk in 1799 with a cargo of gold bullion. The bell is rung once for good news, twice for bad. Losses still are inscribed in the Loss Book with a quill pen by a “waiter,” dressed traditionally as a waiter in a 17th century coffeehouse.

For a century or more, Lloyd's marine policies began with the words, “In the Name of God, Amen,” and had the letters SG on the corner. Many thought this was some Latin reference to good luck, but it was found to be nothing but a reference to the fact that the policy insured ships and goods.

By tradition, early fire insurance companies, even in the United States, issued policies by hanging wooden and metal fire marks on insured premises — signals to the fire department, which the insurer generally also operated, that the premises were insured.

About as close to a tradition as many American insurers came was their trademarks. Those with fire marks often adopted them as trademarks; for example, the four leaden hands in a fireman's carry of Ben Franklin's 1752 Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insuring of Houses Against Fire, the green tree on the fire mark of a mutual insurer that would not insure a house in a forest, or the red fire engine on the fire mark of another early fire insurer. The badge or fire mark of the Insurance Company of North America in 1794 was a six-pointed star, but this gave way two years later to an eagle rising from a rock. The company's first fire insurance customer, William Beynroth, bought $8,000 worth of protection on German dry goods that he kept at his house.

Today, few of the traditional symbols of insurers, those trademarks that became common in the 19th and 20th centuries, remain. We still can recognize the Travelers' famous red umbrella and Hartford's elk, but how many, even now, remember St. Paul's globe and clock with the motto, “Serving you around the world, around the clock”? Prudential's Rock of Gibraltar survives, as does Fireman Fund's fireman's hat, but the Continental soldier, with his musket at the ready, may not be standing sentry duty any longer, nor is Home's key man.

Mt. Etna of little Aetna is now just a part of Cigna, but Lady Liberty still graces Liberty Mutual ads, and American Hardware Mutual may still display the open pocket watch. Wausau's little railroad station, which once was a Chicago & Northwestern depot, is gone, but some suggest that the angled lines in Safeco's “S” represent that roof. Of course, there is always the American Indian's head on the Mutual of Omaha ads, and lots of companies employ dead presidents, including Washington, Lincoln, and (although he was not a president, at least he signed documents) the scrawl of John Hancock.

An Adjuster's Tradition?

I know of no tradition, symbol, custom, or costume for claim adjusters. Was the meeting at the corner bar on Friday afternoon after work a tradition? Perhaps. I doubt that is even much of a custom anymore. Now, everybody wants to get out and beat the traffic to the freeway.

The image of the hard-drinking, tough-talking street adjuster probably is more a myth than it ever was a reality. Our derby hats of the 1920s and 30s gave way to the fedoras of the 40s and 50s. Today, it is doubtful whether any claim representative wears much other than a baseball cap, unless it is snowing outside. Even the typical coat and tie may be things of the past in many companies. Some even wear flip-flops instead of shoes.

Except for a few property adjusters who are inspecting damaged buildings or those out on catastrophe duty, there is not much danger to our vocation. We do not go out to meet with injured claimants much anymore, and it would seem rare for the adjuster to visit a work site to conduct an investigation, perhaps falling in harm's way. Our biggest danger is that of an auto accident or being socked in the kisser by some irate claimant who did not like our settlement offer. But those hazards are not unique to adjusting.

So, what is our tradition? What rituals can we call our own? No, traditions are not necessary for life, but they do add a bit of ethical pleasure to it.

Ken Brownlee, CPCU, is a former adjuster and risk manager, based in Atlanta. He now authors and edits claim adjusting textbooks.

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Tradition, Tradition!

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