Robert W.
Strain was born November 15, 1924, in Dallas and reared in Athens, Texas,
graduating from high school there in 1942 with honors (but just barely). Before and after World War II, he pursued
jobs through eleven years of college as a dormitory waiter, term paper typist,
clerk in the dean’s office, grader of business law exams, film projectionist,
newspaper deliverer, teacher, and entrepreneur (coowner of photography business
for sororities and fraternities, and publisher of PH.D. economic theory
notes). Results: he received three
degrees (BBA, MBA, DBA) from as many universities, two luckily with honors
(Texas Tech U., Louisiana State U., Indiana U.,). His doctoral dissertation was entitled, Life with The Lincoln
(1905-1955), a History of The Lincoln National Life Insurance Company, which
the company commissioned for its golden anniversary. He holds both professional insurance designations, CLU and CPCU.
During
World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy as a yeoman and after the war as an
officer in Naval Intelligence Reserve, with assignments in Washington DC,
Manila, and Tokyo.
He was a
professor of insurance at the University of Texas for three years (1955-1958)
after serving on the faculty of Indiana University the previous five years
during graduate work. In 1958 he was
appointed by Governor Price Daniel as an insurance commissioner in Texas,
serving to 1964, when he became executive secretary of the National Association
of Insurance Agents in New York City.
From 1964 to 1984 he was dean and later vice president of The College of
Insurance in New York. In 1984 he
resigned to form a corporation devoted to publishing and reinsurance education.
Appointed
to the first examination board of the Insurance Institute of America, he served
there for more than twenty years. He
has written and spoken on insurance subjects throughout the U.S., in Canada,
London, and Manila. He was an ocean
marine insurance consultant for the United Nations, as well as the insurance
education consultant for the formation of the Asian Institute of Insurance in
Manila.
He was
production editor of two insurance accounting books for the Insurance
Accounting and Systems Association: the
first four editions of Property-Liability
Insurance Accounting (1974-1988), and the first edition of Life Insurance Accounting. In addition, he now edits and publishes five
reinsurance books: a textbook, Reinsurance, 1980; a workbook
accompanying the textbook, Reinsurance
Practices: A Workbook with Cases, 1982;
a directory revised annually since 1983:
Reinsurance Directory – Bermuda,
Canada, and USA; the world’s first book on Reinsurance
Contract Wording, 1992, revised ever so slightly in 1996; and Reinsurance, 1997, a complete revision
of the 1980
textbook, also available in
Spanish as Reaseguros, 2001, all
described on
WWW.STRAINPUBLISHINGINC.COM
He considers himself blessed with a superb wife who retired some years ago as a gift manufacturer representative from her own corporation on Fifth Avenue in New York. From an earlier marriage, his three offspring in New York, Illinois, and Connecticut have produced five grandchildren. His hobbies, with which he spends insufficient time, are finding literary “gems” in old bookstores, creating bluebird and wood duck houses, encouraging a three-hundred-tree orchard of pears and peaches, daily refreshment from The New York Times (except politically), weekly refreshment from The Economist (except religiously), listening to classical music and avoiding fire ants. His latest project was teaching a thirteen-week class on the parables to other mature citizens who needed it maybe less than he did.
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