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Show INSURANCE BUSINESS' STAR IS A WOMAN By MARIAN YOUNG " x NEW YORK According to her colleague, the beat man In the Insurance bualneis la a woman. Her namt Is Ray WllnerSundelson, and In the past 45 years she has produced $170,000,000 worth of Insurance business on about 25,000 lives. During 43 of those years, the First Lady of Life Insurance has been, and still la, the only woman general agent. There are women engaged in the selling of Insurance Insur-ance and even In Important managerial positions, of course, but none In the capacity of general agent, j Ray Wllner Sundelson's success story, from' the time she came from Russia to this country at the age of 12, until she achieved her present Important I position, reada like fairy tale. She herself tells it J breathlessly. 1 "'At 14, 1 was employed as a typist In an Insurance ) broker's office. Between letters I read every Insur ance book that I could lay hands on how to sell Insurance, In-surance, how to buy It, different kinds of policies and iao on. I made up my mind that I wanted to stay in that line of work, but not as typist" Finally, after a year, the little immigrant girl resigned re-signed becauie they wouldn't let her try to sell policies. ' 1 got a job with a general agent and sold so much ' Insurance that he was getting rich," the dark-haired, pleasant-faced Mrs. Sundelson continues. "So I brought my work to the attention of the late Gaga E. Turn bell, of the Equitable Life Assurance society, who gave me my first contract." A few years later. In 1901, It was Ray Wllner Sundelson, Sun-delson, general agent, who Inserted an advertisement In New York newspapers which said: "Women can avail themselves of the advantages of life Insurance." Prior to that time, although It had been poaalMe for women to buy insurance, precious few of them . had. By 1937, 25 per cent of the policyholders In the Equitable were women. "However," Mrs. Sundelson observes, "women, have only 10 billions of the life Insurance In the United Unit-ed States. The surface la-only scratched. If I were a young girl graduating from college next year, I'd give these facts some serious thought before taking a Job which would tie me to a desk from 9 to 5 every day. The Insurance woman's time Is pretty much her own, and this allows her easily to combine mar rlage and a family and a career, If she chooses to .do so." Mrs. Sundelson Is a feminist In that she believes ' that It's about time that women's abilities in business Were recognized and that they were paid accordingly for them. But ahe doesn't think that femininity ever ahould - be sacrificed for a career. Through the struggling years I was first of all a wife and mother," she explains. The nature of my business allowed me to be. I apent plenty of time with my husband and children. I aaw to It that my son and daughter got excellent educations. My son is a professor of public financing and economics eco-nomics at Rutgers university and an Instructor at the Banking Institute of New York. My daughter, since her graduation from college, has been associated associat-ed with me in my easiness." Mrs. Sundelson believes that a tremendous measure mea-sure of her success Is due to the fact that she waa the first Insurance agent to go after the business of the "little people." "The first policies I turned In were on the Uvea of wage earners and small business men the people who are today the backbone of all Insurance business. I figured that they are the ones who have a great need for life Insurance, and I must have won them over to my way of figuring." |