Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, May 17, 1995                   TAG: 9505170064
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

INSURER BACK IN THE FAMILY

Chas. Lunsford Sons & Associates, a Roanoke insurance brokerage, has new owners who include a member of the firm's founding family.

Charles I. Lunsford II, great-grandson of the founder, and Roy E. Bucher Jr., the company's president, said Tuesday they have purchased the 125-year-old company.

They have agreed in principle to buy the operation from Rollins Hudig Hall of Virginia Inc., a unit of a Chicago-based. international insurance broker that bought the firm 11 years ago.

Lunsford will return to the business on an active basis as chairman and treasurer.

His great-grandfather founded the agency in 1870, a dozen years before the city of Roanoke was formed. Four generations of his family have managed the business and been leaders in civic and business affairs.

Bucher has been president of Rollins Hudig Hall of Virginia and will be president and secretary of Chas. Lunsford Son & Associates. He began working for the Roanoke firm in 1977.

Chas. Lunsford Sons & Associates is one of the state's largest insurance agencies, employing about 40 people at offices in Roanoke and Blacksburg.

"Employees will be offered stock in the company," Lunsford said. "The people who work for this corporation will own it and control its destiny."

"We have benefited from being part of a huge international broker," Bucher said. "Our customers will receive the same high level of services and will continue to have available the Rollins Hudig Hall resources when necessary."

The insurance brokerage was sold in 1984 to Frank B. Hall & Co., a network of insurance agencies. Rollins Hudig Hall, which owned the Virginia subsidiary, was created later through a merger of the company with two other insurance agency networks.

Lunsford worked for the agency for three years after the sale, leaving active management in 1987. He maintained his insurance license, however, and worked as a consultant to the brokerage.

After leaving the company, Lunsford earned a master's degree in education from Radford University and became certified in junior and senior high school guidance at Virginia Tech. He later worked in the guidance department of Hargrave Military Academy.

Lunsford was director of Center in the Square from 1989 to 1992. Since then, he has served as a probation officer in juvenile court, worked on the finance committee of a group building a church in Moneta and held membership on the boards of several youth organizations.

He also is a director of Roanoke Electric Steel Corp., Carilion Health System, Roanoke Memorial Hospital and Center in the Square.

Bucher is a member of the Roanoke Civic Center Commission and past president of the Virginia Museum of Transportation. He is a director of the Better Business Bureau and the Gator Aquatic Center.

They said there will be no changes in employment as a result of the purchase.

Other officers of the company are G. Logan Forsyth, executive vice president; W. Edward Riley III, John D. Dove Jr. and Margaret Capito, senior vice presidents; Frank M. Tinsley Jr. and Wallace J. Nelson Jr., vice presidents; and C. Kaye Simpson, assistant vice president.