Muscogee County GaArchives Photo Person.....Amos, John B. ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 June 2, 2007, 7:44 pm Source: Sesquicentennal Supplement IV, Ledger-Enquirer Name: John B. Amos Photo can be seen at: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/amos13413gph.jpg Image file size: 50.6 Kb Amos and His Dream By David Everett Enquirer Staff Writer In April 1956, John Beverly Amos had sold enough of $10 down, $10 a month stock in his insurance company to set up shop in Columbus. His agents sold weekly premiums, trying to make it big. But by the end of 1957 the company went broke and had to stell out to a Macon firm. Amos sat back. He knew he had a dream and could turn it into dollar-sign reality with a little luck and a lot of work. And Amos had another idea, why not sell cancer insurance? In that first year of his second company - 1958 - his young firebrand agents sold 5,828 policies for cancer and health insurance. Today, the multi-million-dollar American Family Life Assurance Company sells that many policies each day, before noon. American Family is now an international conglomerate, headquartered in an 18- story skyscraper on Wynnton Road in Columbus. There, on the top floor, Amos directs an operation which includes insurance sales in Japan, Canada and other countries, and sales and communications operations in the United States. "Ambition is a curse and when you're cursed with it, the only thing to do is chase it. I think a fellow who has less drive and less ambition would be happier," Amos said in a recent interview. His ambitions have led him to friendships with the late Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter.And they have led him to bring the name of Columbus to many of the place's he visits. Amos considers Columbus a place for success. Tom Huston, Royal Crown, Martin Theatres - they have all prospered here. Today, he travels by private jet to points across the world. His brothers, Paul and Bill, are his two primary executives in the business. And his wife, Elena, is his constant consultant and companion. Amos is a lawyer and active politician and is generally considerted one of the few political "bosses" in Muscogee County. He downplays his political clout, however. "I think I know how to sell and I'll sell a candidate if he's got the basic materials," he said. "But it's not that I can pick up the phone and call five or 50 people or 150 people and swing an election. It's that I have some of the abilitie's of a campaign manager," Amos' ability to sell has been his strong point. It was that ability and a local television newscast that led to a $10 million a year project for American Family: "I was sitting at the television one night listening to a local newscast. And it seemed every time, they had just rushed somebody to the Medical Center and they were in intensive care. "And this startedd running through my mind like a son - 'Intensive care is expensive care.' "I called all the hospitals that night and asked them how many intensive care beds they had in Columbus and Phenix City and I took the metropolitan population and divided it by the number of beds to get the probabilities. "The next morning we printed intensive care policies." Six months later Amos asked his executives how the policies had done, and he told them to "let 'er go." Today, American Family has more than 105,000 intensive care policies in effect and it is netting his company more than $10 million a year. As American Family continues to write the records of growth for insurance companies in the nation, Amos' own record as an administrator reaches legendary proportions. His career began in Florida when as a teen-ager he began a weekly newspaper, The Jay Tribune. After college, law school and a short foray into law and the Florida insurance industry, he came to Georgia to begin his dream. Today that dream is unparalleled in Columbus. And , Amos stands to make more than $3 million annually as chief of American Family, if the company's growth record continues. Most observers of Amos and his dream think it will. Special Sesquicentennal Supplement IV Ledger - Enquirer, Sunday, May 7, 1978, S-27 John Beverly Amos b. 6/5/1924- d. 8/13/1990 (CGT) Elena D. Amos b. 10/1/1925- d 5/3/2000. (CGT) File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/muscogee/photos/amos13413gph.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/gafiles/ File size: 4.9 Kb