Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 2, 1995 TAG: 9511020066
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was bombed April 19, Roanoke insurance agent Christopher Caveness led a delegation of psychologists to Oklahoma City to help his clients work out their shock and grief.
Caveness is an agent for MONY (Mutual of New York) and an owner of Caveness & Conner Insurance Group. He is also active in efforts to attract customers and clients to the Roanoke City Market, where he moved his office in May 1994.
Caveness ranks second in the country as a producer of employee benefit plans such as medical and pension plans. He markets to private subcontractors for the federal government who perform such functions as security, custodial and commissary work.
He traveled to Oklahoma City two years ago to set up such a MONY plan for Oklahoma Goodwill Industries, insuring 40 commissary and custodial employees.
Having met the employees then, Caveness was shocked to hear of the blast. Even though no Goodwill employee was killed or seriously injured, Caveness knew they would be emotionally scarred by the experience.
He flew to Oklahoma City April 27 and stayed three days, taking along several psychologists from Minneapolis who had been retained by MONY. He also arranged with MONY to waive the surrender fee on the plans for about 10 of the Goodwill employees who lost their jobs when the federal building was destroyed.
Caveness donated $1,000 of his own money, which MONY matched, to help the survivors as well.
John Smalley, vice president of Goodwill, wrote afterward that MONY and Caveness went beyond the expected.
"Following the crisis," Smalley wrote, "many business people from around the country offered to help. Chris never asked if there was anything he could do; he simply went ahead and did what was needed." Waiving the fee and providing counseling "gave us peace of mind during a period of emotional trauma," Smalley said.
Two Goodwill employees were inside the building and had to fight their way out. Another man, who was slightly injured by the explosion that came just as he was entering the building, moved an uprooted fence to the wreckage, climbed up and pulled out survivors and the dead.
None of these people could speak afterward. "You could see in their faces the emotion all bottled up," Caveness said. The psychologists were able to get them to talk out their feelings and to realize that they could honor their dead friends by talking about them.
When he returned home, Caveness was one of the helpers who were given a painting of Oklahoma City with the legend: "An emptiness was created in Oklahoma City - We are filling it with love." It hangs on the wall of his office.
The Roanoke office has been named MONY's leading agency for the last four years, and it is a "master agency" in the top 1 percent in the nation.
The agency recently added property and casualty lines to its existing life and health business. Caveness himself has developed a business in structured settlements resulting from personal injury claims.
After moving to the Roanoke City Market, Caveness and others began working to entice people to do their business, eat lunch and shop in the area. The idea, he said, is to make doing business downtown a pleasurable experience.
by CNB