I was celebrating a win over a crazy case at a Florida Association of Public Insurance Adjusters (FAPIA) meeting in the late 1990s. My client’s soon-to-be ex-husband, who was not on the title to the property, appeared to have burned down the family residence—the police arrested him a block away from the house while he was sitting on a park bench with three empty gas cans next to him. The insurance company finally agreed to pay the full claim to my client earlier in the day. I was very jubilant.
Mark Boardman came up to me and asked, “Chip, what’s your ultimate goal?” I told him, “To be the best.” For over 25 years, Boardman has been reminding me of that day. He would be needling me and asking how I am coming along with reaching that goal.
I am going to miss telling him about my successes and failures. I am going to miss going up to Gator football games and visiting with him and Karen at their number one Gator-decorated house. I am going to miss talking about Gator basketball with Mark. I am going to miss talking about the upcoming political agenda in Tallahassee, where he always seemed to have insider knowledge.
My recently written suggestion about public adjusters having to raise the bar to obtain a license is not a new idea. I voiced it once to Mark Boardman, and he did something about it. He responded with the idea that public adjusters should be required to have an apprentice period before they practice public adjusting and receive a full license. I thought it was a great idea. I told him that I doubted if he could ever get it through the legislature or obtain enough support to make it a reality. He wrote the law, lobbied for it and seemed to get the Florida public adjuster apprentice law passed almost by himself.
Mark loved to poke at and needle others. He was especially gifted at doing this to the opposing coach at Gator basketball games. I loved it when he invited me to attend games with him because his seats were right behind the opposing team’s coach. The typical dialogue would usually contain some of the following:
“Coach, your guard looks pretty tired, do you think it’s time to give him a breather?”
“Coach, you need to keep under control, focused and not get upset with the ref’s horrible calls.”
“You’re doing great, Coach. Just keep ignoring the scoreboard and focus on the fundamentals.”
“I admire your composure—most coaches would be losing it after those last few calls.”
“That was a bold call Coach, not what I expected. You must see something we don’t. Too bad it didn’t work.”
“Coach, is your zone defense meant to leave that shooter open in the corner?”
“Looks like your bench is really quiet tonight—are they okay?”
It would go on like that the entire game. Most coaches would laugh. Some would get upset and then crack a smile. One turned around and shook Mark’s hand.
Mark’s father was a lobbyist for Florida’s Dairy Farmers. Mark learned well and used this knowledge to help FAPIA. He would invite me up to Tallahassee and always to the Governor’s Club to meet lobbyists and politicians. Mark seemed to know them all. He was instrumental in obtaining FAPIA’s first lobbyist, Past Senate President Ken Plante.
Mark’s lobbying efforts were on his own time and dime. He did it as a labor of love, supporting all public adjusters and policyholder rights. Mark Boardman was always in Tallahassee fighting and testifying about the nuanced insurance issues that matter. He did this for about three decades. Much of this work was done with no fanfare and often without appreciation.
Mark was certainly not afraid to publicly discuss and debate his views and opinions. Meetings between Mark and other public adjusters about the right course of action would become quite pointed, if not close to combative. An example of him publicly explaining his views was in an Insurance Journal article about independent adjusters wrongly having their reports changed by desk adjusters:
‘It’s extremely widespread,’ said Mark Boardman, president of Claims Management Services Inc., based in Maitland, Florida. ‘Can I prove it? No. But I have had a lot of anecdotal conversations with adjusters about it.’
Independent adjusters are different from public adjusters, and are often hired by insurance companies to supplement in-house adjustment staff. Until now, many have been reluctant to speak out about the purported practices, fearing that they could lose out on insurance company business, Boardman explained.
Every public adjuster in Florida should pause for a second to thank Mark for the contributions he made for other public adjusters. I had the chance to say so privately to him after I learned how sick he became. He seemed to be appreciative and suggested that everybody should give back by participating more in politics to any extent they can.
Going to Gainesville for football games and basketball will not be the same without my old Gator buddy. Going to the Governor’s Club and into legislative rooms in Tallahassee without Mark being there or calling to suggest a way to politically treat an issue will seem different in the future. I guess in the end, when our friends pass, all we have left are memories of them, those events, those intimate discussions, the common challenges we faced, and the times we shared with each other.
Thought For The Day
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
— Dr. Seuss
