Sad news

Insurance Advocate has received two sad notices, as we go to press. The first was this note and obituary from Diana Sands, daughter of Linda Lamel.
“Dear Steve: My mother passed away on Friday, December 5th at her Manhattan home at the age of 71. At her request and with the encouragement of her former colleagues and friends, I would like to submit a draft of a possible obituary for my Mom to Insurance Advocate. She was an avid reader of your paper and was quite sure you would have past material about her work as well as interest enough to write about her. We’re hoping a notice/obituary/article about her in Insurance Advocate will spread the news and inform readers about her passing and about her extraordinary life of service and accomplishment. Thank you, Diana Sands.” Of course we report this sad news of an untimely death of a great industry colleague to so many:

Linda H. Lamel passed away peacefully in her daughter’s arms on December 5th after a valiant, three-year struggle against a rare form of thymic cancer. Born and raised in both Brooklyn and Queens, she became a proud Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Queens College, NYU, and Brooklyn Law School. Early on as a high school Social Studies teacher in Farmingdale, Long Island in the 1960s, she was elected Shop Steward for the local teacher’s union and fought for maternity leave protections among many other rights. Later on she became a pioneer of the modern women’s movement and a leader in the insurance industry, specializing in regulation, solvency, life and health insurance, corporate governance, compliance, claims adjudication, and executive compensation. She was New York State’s first female Deputy Superintendent of Insurance and a founder and first President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) on Long Island. A former President and CEO of The College of Insurance, she inspired and helped launch the insurance industry careers of a number of protégés. She was the Campaign Manager for Lt. Governor Mary Anne Krupsak’s successful 1974 election campaign and was her Chief of Staff (where she hired and mentored current Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer). After government service, she worked in the insurance industry as a Vice President of TIAA-CREF, Executive Director of the Risk and Insurance Management Society, CEO of Claims on Line, Inc., a Director of Universal American Corp. and SCOR Reinsurance Company (US), and a consultant, trainer, and arbitrator specializing in insurance dispute resolution and regulation.

Ms. Lamel held a number of leadership roles in industry and bar organizations as chair of the ABA Torts and Insurance Practice Section, Executive Committee Member of the NYSBA Insurance Section, Association of Professional Insurance Women’s Woman of the Year, a member of the Insurance and Risk Management Council of the American Management Association, chair of the Medical Malpractice Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Founding Director of the American Society of Workers Compensation Professionals, a member of the Reinsurance Advisory Committee to Senator Biden of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, a member of the Presidential Council of AIDA-US, and Corporate Director and Adjunct Professor of Insurance Law at Brooklyn Law School. Ms. Lamel also served in leadership roles for many non-profit women’s and community organizations, including but not limited to, Phi Beta Kappa, the League of Women Voters, Hour Children (Astoria), the Association of Professional Insurance Women, and as the President of the Alumni Association for Brooklyn Law School. She is survived by her daughter, Diana Sands, her sisters Donna Weintraub and Eileen Hill, her brother Jerry Treppel, and her mother, Sylvia Treppel, as well as a great number of friends and colleagues who will miss her bright mind and warm heart. Contributions may be made to Hour Children in her honor. … At about the same time we learned that Gordon Curran Stewart, former president of the Insurance Information Institute (I.I.I.), died in Garrison, New York. Gordon, who joined the Institute in 1989 as Executive Vice President and in 1991 became its president until his retirement in 2006, was credited with turning the Institute from a small public relations organization into an important insurance reference point for journalists, academics and policymakers. “Much of what the I.I.I. is today is based upon the foundation Gordon built during his time here,” said Dr. Robert Hartwig, president of the I.I.I. Hartwig, who succeeded Stewart as president of the I.I.I. added “Gordon’s accomplishments throughout the course of his life were truly extraordinary. He was not only successful in the business world and at the highest levels of government, but also in the field of performing arts.”

Gordon Stewart was born on July 22, 1939, on the south side of Chicago. He re- ceived his Bachelor of Arts degree from the Oberlin College of Arts and Sciences (as a full four-year George F. Baker Scholar, having been accepted at the age of 16), where he focused on history and music. He re- turned to the University of Chicago to work on a Ph.D. in European history. He studied music and drama at the University of Vienna in Austria, and then received an MFA in directing from Yale School of Drama be- fore becoming a doctoral candidate in comparative literature at Yale Graduate School, which led to his first position as an instructor of English and theatre at Amherst College. He left teaching at Amherst to begin a career in drama and politics in New York. While directing plays, he also worked as Di- rector of Communications for Business Communications for the Arts (BCA). There he wrote his first article for a noted public figure, former U.S. Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, followed by speeches for Katharine Graham of The Washington Post, William S. Paley of CBS and Arnold Gingrich, the founder of Esquire magazine. Gingrich introduced Stewart to New York Mayor John Lindsay, which led to a position as Chief Speechwriter and Executive Assistant to the Mayor from 1971-1973. Following his time in City Hall, Stewart was Director of Policy for Howard J. Samuels’s run for the Governorship of New York in 1974, and also wrote speeches for other Democratic Party campaigns, including Jimmy Carter’s successful run for the Presidency in 1976 — he was then appointed President Carter’s Deputy Chief Speech- writer. From 1982 to 1989, Stewart was Vice President of the American Stock Exchange. In addition, he helped to manage the task- force created by New York Governor Mario Cuomo and New York Mayor David Dink- ins that resolved the multi-year impasse over what to do with the $7 billion of federal highway money left over when the Westway Project was halted. After retiring from the Insurance Information Institute in 2006, Stewart continued his involvement in insurance industry affairs, serving as Vice Chair- man and Chairman of the Nominating Committee of the International Insurance Society, the world’s largest insurance industry organization, with almost 900 members representing global insurance leaders, inter- national regulatory authorities and world- wide insurance scholars from over 90 countries. In 1995, Stewart was invited by the industry-CEO membership of the Switzerland-based think tank The Geneva Association for the Study of Insurance Economics to chair the Geneva Association’s first Communications Council, and to later become the North American Liaison in charge of managing the Association’s presence in the U.S. Stewart also served as Chairman of the Named Fiduciaries of the Pension Plan for Insurance Organizations, one of the largest multiple employer pension plans in the country. In 2006, Stewart started his own company, Mind Inc., which focused on creating connections between broader insights into society, politics and the arts. In 2010, Stewart created an online newspaper, Philipstown.info, a working model for community supported journal- ism similar to listener supported radio that can be replicated in municipalities all across the country. In 2013, Stewart was named one of the “Century’s Game Changers” by the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, an association for commercial insurance intermediaries, for his work with the Institute. Stewart leaves behind his wife, Zanne, and his daughter, Katy. His family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations in Gordon’s name be made to the nonprofit community newspaper he founded, Philip- stown.info. Donations can be made online at philipstown.info/support or by check to: Philipstown.info, Inc., 69 Main St., Cold Spring, NY 10516.