Content area
Full text
Michael Pera has worked at the same place for 29 years four years longer than he's been married - but he says it's no big deal, and that he can point to any number of people who had worked there even longer.
Like his dad.
Pera is managing director of the Memphis office of Marsh USA, Inc., making him the boss of the city's largest property and casualty insurance agency. Marsh came into Memphis by acquiring Sedgwick & James in 1998. 12 years earlier, Sedgwick had entered the market when it bought
Pera's employer, E.H. Crump & Co.
"My father was with Crump for 54 years," Pera says. "He started in 1929, which was a great year to have a job. People thought that when Mr. Crump died the company would fold, but we only lost 3% of our business."
Pera was hired in 1972 by E.H. Crump Jr., son of the former Memphis mayor known as Boss Crump, who began buying up small agencies across the Southeast until Crump was among the nation's top 10 agencies. In talking about the history of the company, Pera still affectionately says "Mr. Crump" both because he grew up hearing his father say that, and out of respect for the man who built the company.
"I was 8 years old when...