Retirement finds salesman after 70 years on the job

Bruno Pinkos is a loyal man.

He's been loyal to the Mount Prospect home he bought back in 1954. He still lives there.

He has been loyal to his family, staying married to his beloved, Irene, until she passed away in 1993. The father of two and grandfather of four now boasts two great-grandchildren, as well.

Most amazingly, however, he has been loyal to the company that hired him straight out of college in the depths of The Great Depression. A true "company man," Pinkos, now 92, just retired from selling insurance for Prudential late last month -- after 70 years.

This is a shocking feat, indeed, when you consider that an economic survey conducted last year by the European Union revealed that the average job tenure of an American today is only four years.

"I started as an agent with Prudential in their office at Western and Diversey on Dec. 27, 1937, after earning a degree in commerce from DePaul University," Pinkos recalled.

The insurance business in those days was totally different from what it is today.

"In 1937 I had a debit book of clients and I went around and collected premiums every week," Pinkos recalled in a Prudential employee magazine article published in 1997. "At that time, one in five homes around Chicago were Prudential people. They had some form of insurance with us. They were like family. They would refer me to their friends and family for insurance. I was their insurance man."

He tells of a Canadian family he insured in 1938. The father was killed and the family had no money.

"So I went to an undertaker and made the arrangements. I went to a clothing store and bought a dress for his little girl, a suit for him, a dress for his wife," he said. "I did all this because I was Prudential and Prudential made it possible for the family to bury the father with dignity."

By the early 1950s, Pinkos had worked his way up to being Prudential's top salesman among its 20,000 agents nationwide.

"I was good at promoting. I had been doing it since I was a teenager, putting together and promoting 16-inch softball tournaments with up to 64 teams," he explained. "So I just transferred that ability to selling insurance."

And to hear Pinkos tell it, he never worked a day in his life. He enjoyed selling insurance so much that it never seemed like work to him.

"Over the years, I was offered a lot of different positions with other companies, but I never took them. I was a Prudential man," he said.

"I attribute my success to the fact that I had an instinct to accomplish things and I enjoyed motivating others in everything I did -- from softball to selling insurance," Pinkos said.

In the 1950s, he attended classes on selling the revolutionary new hospitalization insurance. He later became an instructor of the classes and discovered that, like selling, teaching was in his blood.

He even volunteered at the Cook County jail at 26th and California for several years in the late 1960s, working with inmates to teach human motivation and to inspire them.

Pinkos became an agent emeritus in 1976, selling on his own timetable, working out of the Rosemont and Oak Brook offices.

And Prudential didn't forget him. He became a company legend and was even invited to speak at the company's world conference in San Francisco in 1998, an experience he still treasures.

"It was a great life for my family and for me. My wife, Irene, and my children, Richard and Dorothy, as well as my grandchildren and great grandchildren enjoyed the life Prudential made possible," Pinkos said in his letter of resignation last month.

"We all wore Prudential coats, gloves and boots," he continued. "We all lived in Prudential homes. We all enjoyed the financial success and prosperity of a life with Prudential. To this very day, there is a painting of the Prudential building in Chicago above my bed. Yes, it was a great life with Prudential."