The Girls from Covenant

In 1976, I started a temp job at Covenant Insurance Company in Hartford, Connecticut. After temping for a couple of weeks, I was hired full-time as a mail clerk. Within a year, I started training to be a claim rep and I eventually took over an inside adjuster’s desk; I remained with the Company for 22 years, surviving two buy-outs (by American States Insurance and then by Safeco) and left in 1998 to move to New York City.

Handling insurance claims is a stressful and thankless job: you are always saying ‘no’ to someone, it seems. What made the job bearable (and the days almost enjoyable – almost being the key word) were the people I worked with. From the start, the three women above – Jackie, Trudy and Judy – were among my all-time favorite colleagues. As time passed, they each left to work elsewhere. We kept in touch but seldom saw each other, and after I moved to New York City I heard from them only rarely. But we kept afloat the idea of a reunion and today (July 25, 2012) it finally came to pass, after a lapse of almost a quarter-century since I last saw any of them.

With more than two decades of catching up to do, the conversation over lunch jumped from topic to topic as they talked about their kids (and Jackie about her grand-kids) and we reminisced about people we’d worked with (“Where’s whats-his-name these days?”) who we’ve lost track of. Many of our co-workers have since passed away, of course; we recalled how everyone smoked in the office back in the day, and several kept bottles of booze stashed away in their desks or credenzas and went to imbibe in the bathroom stalls or in their cars during lunch break. Office affairs were commonplace; people who were thought to be happily married were found to be otherwise, forming improbable liaisons along the way.

We walked over by the river, and then took a hike along to the High Line (which has now become a tourist destination and is rather commercialized), ending up at a pub on 8th Avenue for a drink before they headed back to Grand Central.

Trudy & Jackie

Judy and I took private ballet classes together for a while; she had studied as the Hartford Ballet, and she still has ballerina hair.

We parted, agreeing that it would be a good idea not to wait another 25 years before we arrange to meet again.