LifeStyle Leaders
A LEGACY OF COMMUNITY
SERVICE By Elaine Rose
T
hree things seem to be embedded in Tim Glenn’s DNA: insurance, community service, and a love of nature. His passion for turtles, as heard on the company’s radio commercials, is definitely not an advertising gimmick. Thomas L. “Tim” Glenn III, is the fourth-generation to run Glenn Insurance, Inc., located by the bay on the White Horse Pike in Absecon. His father’s side of the family has called Atlantic County home for more than two centuries. Thomas L. Glenn Sr. founded the insurance agency in Atlantic City in 1927. He had been accepted to Harvard Law School but turned down admission to take care of his ailing mother, Glenn said. He worked for the motor-vehicle agency, and friends urged him to start selling insurance. The company later acquired the Phillips Company, an agency founded by relatives in 1879. His great-grandfather, Lewis Glenn, joined the agency during the Great Depression. And Tim Glenn is more than happy to show off hand-written minutes of Phillips Company board
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LIFESTYLE
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meetings dating back to 1899. The agency moved to Northfield, and to its current location — a former fish market — in the mid1980s and employs 49 people. Worker turnover is low, and some have been with the company since Glenn came to work there in 1987. As a youth, Tim Glenn did not work in the family business. He held several odd jobs around the county, including as a golf caddy at Seaview. His sister, Kerri, worked summers for the company, but later married and became a stay-at-home mom of four. After graduating Colgate University — his father’s and grandfather’s alma mater — in 1986, Glenn went to work for another insurance company. “I didn’t want to just walk in as the owner’s son,” he said. But he joined Glenn Insurance soon enough, as he was part of a merger deal. Glenn said he acquired his values from his parents, who from an early age taught him the value of good manners and proper ethics. “You build your character and reputation through a lifetime,” and one mishap can send the entire