A Special Tribute by Progressive

March 28, 2007 was a tragic date for many Progressive employees. That night John Crews, 60, an Injury Operations Manager who had recently celebrated his thirtieth year with Progressive, was home at his high-rise condominium in Long Beach, California.

At about 9:30 PM a fire broke out in his condo. John warned other residents on his floor to evacuate, but for unknown reasons went back into his unit. He did not survive the fire.

The next day, Progressive people throughout California were stunned and shocked with the news of John’s death. Over the years he had been a mentor, father figure and friend to hundreds of employees.

Over 150 current and former Progressive employees attended a memorial service for John in April. Speaker after speaker talked about John’s unique wit, his kindness, love of modern art, extraordinarily eclectic musical tastes, and the impact he had had on their lives.

Jolane Davis, the California HR Manager, approached Corporate Art Curator H. Scott Westover to see if there were any pieces in the Progressive Art Collection that would be appropriate to display as a tribute to John.

When Scott heard about John’s life, his thirty years of service, his love of art, and how many lives he had touched, he made arrangements to have a special memorial created for John.

Artist Tom Ericsson, who has several pieces in the Progressive Art Collection, was commissioned to create an original work of art based on John’s life. This has never been done in Progressive’s history. Tom came to California and interviewed John’s family and friends to get a feel for the truly unique person who was John. He was also able to read some of the hilariously creative emails for which John was famous.

Based on this research, Tom worked over the summer and finished the artwork in September. The piece has been displayed at Campus I in Cleveland and will be permanently displayed in the Buena Park, California claims office where John worked.

People who had seen the artwork in Cleveland described being “speechless” and filled with awe at the beauty of the work.

John Crews hired me in 1984. He was my best friend, and I miss him terribly, but I am only one of hundreds of current and former Progressive people who loved John, and for whom March 28 was an unbelievably sad date.

Progressive’s tribute to John is a lasting, meaningful memorial to this exceptional individual. I know I speak for many others when I say how touched I was by this act, and how incredibly proud I am to work for this company.

--Bob Chambers, November 2007

In the spring of 2007, a three-alarm fire broke out in a 20 story high rise on Ocean Boulevard in Long Beach, California. There was only one fatality. The man’s name was John Crews; he was employed for nearly 30 years with The Progressive Corporation. An eyewitness saw him screaming for help from his balcony: "The fire came at him and he was catching on fire and he just jumped off the balcony."

John was a unique individual and much loved by his fellow workers. A young man who worked for John and thought of him as a kind of father figure was packing up his office in the weeks after his death and told me he’d started to deflate an oversized inflatable novelty (a deer head with antlers that John had purchased in jest to decorate his office). Before opening the air valve, he suddenly recalled that John had inflated this deer head himself just before he died. The young man realized the air in the balloon was John’s breath and respectfully chose not to deflate it.

The air inside of this same inflatable has been released into this glass vessel and sealed in honor of John’s memory and as a metaphor of the profound feeling he inspired in a fellow co-worker. The glass is engraved with lines from “Little Gidding,” by T.S. Eliot, one of John’s favorite poems. These particular lines relate directly to John’s life and death and give voice to everything I believe was at the heart of this man’s wonderful and mysterious intentions in this world.                        

                                                                                   
--T. R. Ericsson

                       
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope or else despair
   Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
   To be redeemed from fire by fire.

   Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
    We only live, only suspire
    Consumed by either fire or fire.