Emilio Miret (1937-2018).

• Position: [IN MEMORIAM] - Obituary

A Personal Tribute

*As David Louie e-mailed the news, I thought to myself "please, not another heartbreaking obituary, please...and certainly not one with the name Emilio Miret in the title."

These successive months of grave losses from the "golden age" of the independent agent, as many friends have termed it, have set off a sense of despair in those of us who worked in the agency force and around it in the 70s, 80s and 90s when the sun smiled on the seemingly incessant golf outings, dinners, congresses, conferences, the new technologies, the lobbying battles, the company--agent relations, the associations --so many of them - the mighty leaders and the store front start-ups, and all of those who were personally involved--personally--in the future of a system that we did not know was destined to become vaguely impersonal, overly consolidated and concentrated, technically dominated, lacking in loyalty, and conducted with none of the aplomb that was needed for a more personally interactive structure. If it was an evolving old boys' club, it was a good one and a pretty happy one. The friendships were far more enduring and meaningful than mere business card flipping and flimsy networking. And then there was the handshake culture. It worked. Sadly we are finding that the great and the small form that era are fulfilling the old maxim, that at the end of the chess game the kings and the pawns all go into the same box.

Among the greats who were at the center of the agency force in New York was Emilio Miret, who helped so many agents and brokers navigate the auto, homeowners and basic markets that he was able to take Empire Insurance in its hey-day to an 800 agency force. He was the spark of enthusiasm at agent meetings and was the promoter who argued, cajoled, beat up underwriters for agents and then took everyone to dinner to keep peace...and do it all over again. Hispanic brokers, Chinese brokers, you name it, got a shot from Emilio Miret and the business and the inner city markets were all the better for it. Here was a true mensch in many languages.

Emilio grew up in a family of eight - with seven sisters, spoiled, as he would recount it, by his parents who raised their family on the Costs del Sol in Spain before moving to Cuba pre Castro in 1953. Jesuit educated, religiously inclined all of his life, he studied law at Havana University but was married to Shirley at 22 and moved with their two sons, Kenneth and Gary to Queens NY. In 1961 he took...