"Where is the sweetest town in Texas?" and 8 Questions with Roger Luttrell

Question 1:
Is it true your agency, Benton-Luttrell Insurance, was founded in 1890?

Roger:
That’s correct. A fellow named R.S. Fulton founded the agency in 1890. Around about 1900, Fulton’s nephew, W.D. Benton, came on board and they built the business over the years.

Fulton dies in 1942 and Benton dies in 1945.

Then Benton’s daughter, Billie, runs the agency for several months until her brother, Henry, comes back home from WW2. He was busy flying B-24s over Germany.

Henry takes over runs the business until his death in 1966. His wife, Jane, then takes the reigns through 1979. When their son, Bill, comes home from college in the late 70s, he joins the family business.

Meanwhile, I was running the Luttrell Agency, which did not start in 1890. But I knew Bill from college and we were good friends.

So in 1994, we became business partners and merged our businesses. That was 26 years ago.

Question 2:
Where is the sweetest town in Texas?

Roger:
I grew up in a small, rural town in North Texas. It's got a lot of history to it.

On his way from wherever the heck Davy Crockett was from, Tennessee or Kentucky, to help the Texans win their fight against Mexico, he crossed the Red River. In the area where he camped, he found lots of pecan trees and oak trees, and he found some hives of honey bees. So he named the area Honey Grove.

WBAP-TV (Television station : Fort Worth, Tex.). [Welcome to Honey Grove], photograph, 197X; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1612467/: accessed December 2, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https…

WBAP-TV (Television station : Fort Worth, Tex.). [Welcome to Honey Grove], photograph, 197X; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1612467/: accessed December 2, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.

When Honey Grove had its sesquicentennial, his museum brought letters that he had written to his wife while he was camping there and said, "Once I get through helping these Texians defeat the Mexicans, we will move to this garden spot of the world."

So that's where I'm from, Honey Grove, Texas. Outside of town, there are signs that say, "Honey Grove, the Sweetest Town in Texas."

Question 3:
Did you play football when you were younger?

Roger:
Yes, in high school and at a small school in Sherman, Texas called Austin College.

I'm not very big. As a matter of fact, I typically ask people, “What position do you think I played?” I usually get cornerback or safety, wide receiver or quarterback, or running back.

I played offensive center at a strapping 5'10” and 190 pounds.

In high school, my team had a lot of success and I wore number 61. But in college, my number was 50.

So, after our first college football game, my parents came out on the field. We'd just gotten beaten pretty badly, and my Dad comes up and goes, "Y'all are not very good."

And my mother says, "Roger, do you think you can get your high school number back?"

I went, "No, Mom. I'm not in high school anymore. I'm in college and this is the number that was issued to me. It's the one I'll have for four years."

She went, "Oh."

I said, "Why?"

And she says, "Well, 61 made you look slimmer than 50."

Question 4:
How much of your career have you spent in the insurance industry?

Roger:
I’ve spent a year-and-a-half in education and 40-plus in insurance.

When I got out of college, I had a Master's in education. I taught high school and coached football, basketball. I also coached golf—which was a joke—but that's what I coached.

Soon after that, I went to work for an insurance company for four years in Houston. After that, we moved to Van Alstyne, Texas, and I went back into the education world for half-a-year.

I got out of education and got back in the agency business in 1982.

Question 5:
What’s some of the best advice you got early in your career—and who gave it to you?

Roger and Bunny newly married at their first home in Houston.

Roger:
In the late 1970s, I took a job with the Continental Insurance Company. At that time, it was the fifth largest insurance company in the world.

The branch manager, who was pretty much a legend in that area, was Richard Ledford. He had worked for the Continental Insurance Company longer than I'd been alive, so he knew a lot about insurance.

This was around the time of the advent of automation coming to our industry, so we'd talk about the tools for success for insurance agencies. I'd talk to him about computers.

He said, "I don't care how many computers you ever buy or think you need. Insurance will always be a people helping people business."

I try to never forget that.

“I don’t care how many computers you ever buy or think you need. Insurance will always be a people helping people business.”
— Richard Ledford

Question 6:
What do you think about technologies like Agency KPI and how we're going to help agencies understand their data?

Roger:
From an agency standpoint, I think it's going to be amazing. With most of the agency management systems, you can probably run reports—if you know the reports to run—to gather information that you can use to communicate—on what makes up your agency, like the book of business you have, as well as revenues and premium volume.

But it's embarrassing when an insurance company knows more about your business than you do! But that's the way we've operated forever because we allow them to bring their reports and share with us what our policy counts are and other information.

Agency KPI brings a couple of things that will be a great benefit to an agency owner and manager. Not only will we have that data in front of us, but it's also going to bring a whole different knowledge base to agency owners and managers, so they can negotiate on level terms.

And in some cases, I hope, maybe a position of strength over some of our carriers, because we may be ahead of them with information.

Question 7:
How is it possible to have a total loss on a riding lawnmower?

Roger:
At our place, we have an acre-and-a-quarter with a fenced-in yard. Then we got about 3-4 acres along a creek.

I've got one of those really fun Kubota, zero turn, hot rod mowers. I can fly. I'm pretty handy with it.

It was late on a Monday. Bunny was shopping somewhere and gone, and right when I was getting on the mower, the pool guys showed up. I wave at them and they wave back, and I go about my business.

I was mowing pretty close to the creek. Well, there's this one blade of grass. It's just a weed. I don't if I have OCD or whatever the deal is, but by God, I was going to mow that weed down.

So I blast-down toward the creek bank to cut it, and when I spun the mower back around, it didn't go forward. I was spinning tires. It quickly became obvious to me that I'm done. I'm going in. Kind of like slow-motion when you're in a car accident. I fell about 12 feet down to the creek.

The mower falls straight down. It rolls over and it throws me out of the seat and throws me on the ground. Then it falls on top of me and pins me down!

The mower weighs about 800-900 pounds, so I can't do like a push-up. I can't get my arms under and get leverage. I can't bring my knees up. I'm stuck. I'm just stuck there.

I started yelling for help, but I'm way down in the creek. Nobody's going to hear me. I thought, "Well, just calm down. Somebody will find me, it's no big deal."

Then I started feeling something wet on my leg. The gas tank was leaking on the engine and it's smoking really bad. I thought, "You know, I've been a jerk to a lot of people in my lifetime, but I don't want to burn to death."

All of a sudden, two guys jumped from the very top down to the side of the mower. And first, they make sure I'm alive, because they didn't know! It was the two guys working on the swimming pool, but they couldn't lift the mower off of me.

So they rocked it about six times, and it got up about an inch or two, where I could get free. The adrenaline kicked in and I scooted out. It took all three of us to turn it back over. It was pretty bent up.

I said, “Well, let's see if it'll start." Unbelievably, that mower started.

So I put the mower up, went and took a shower. The next day, of course, my entire lower back and sides were just black and blue.

I got it fixed, but I didn't get on it again for two years.

Roger and Bunny at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego.

Question 8:
Your very close friends say that you've played about 10,000 rounds of golf in your life. When do you plan to get a hole-in-one?

Roger:
Yeah, that probably came from Russell, my son. I do enjoy playing golf. Matter of fact, I'm going to go hit golf balls this afternoon and I have yet to have a hole-in-one.

We're leaving tomorrow to go to our place in New Mexico. I'll be playing golf for about 10 days. Hopefully, I might get that hole in one.

Lisa