Jim Hughes looks back at 50 years in insurance business

SWAMPSCOTT ? Jim Hughes is a people person.That’s one of the reasons he has been selling insurance for a half century.”I like people. I like talking person-to-person,” said the 77-year-old owner of Hughes Insurance at 135 Burrill St.Last Saturday, he celebrated 50 years in the business, which he started in a small office at the opposite end of the same street. “My father worked for an insurance company so in a way I grew up with it,” he said.According to Hughes, the insurance industry has remained unchanged in some ways, and drastically altered in others, much of the latter fostered in recent years by new laws, policies, and communication technology.”When people come into my office, they see a secretary working. When they call, a real person answers the phone,” he said. “I couldn’t have it any other way. Insurance is a personal thing and that means you have to know something about your customers, not just have them fill out a couple of forms. Sending emails and talking to a telephone answering machine just isn’t my way. But I’ve been lucky because I’ve had great customers who have stayed loyal to me. Most of the insurance companies have changed a lot and personally I think they want to get rid of the agents.”Two types of insurance have endured the biggest changes – automobile and flood.”With auto, they call it managed competition, and right now the premiums in Massachusetts are a little lower because of it. But the rates are slowing going back up at some of the companies, so we’ll see how long this lasts,” he said. “And as for flood, well, we live close to the ocean and they’re always predicting the 100-year storm. I haven’t seen one yet but I’d like to be around if it comes.”Part of being a people person is the ability to tell stories and Jim Hughes has a lot of them. Since he is passionate about sports and coached for many years in Swampscott – football, basketball, golf ? his tales often involve recalling certain games or related events. There’s one about the Swampscott boys’ CYO basketball league back in 1954, when Hughes was organizing it.As he tells it, the players were presumably of the Catholic faith and the holders of baptismal certificates – requirements to step onto the court. In truth, a few were Protestant or Hebrew, but Hughes says he fixed that little glitch by getting the new priest at St. John’s to sign a stack of blank baptismal certificates.”I told him it was just a formality and that he wouldn’t get into any trouble,” said Hughes. “Luckily he didn’t know much about sports. He didn’t know if the ball was blown up or stuffed.”As it turned out, the team won the state championship. Hughes bought the players team jackets. At the celebratory dinner, the same priest mentioned to Hughes that some of the players were unfamiliar.”Obviously he’d never seen some of these kids, so I told him, ‘Father, they must go to a different Mass,” said Hughes, still chuckling over the incident.The CYO team went on to win five consecutive state championships. “This in a little town that had never played basketball,” he said proudly, adding that he started a girls’ CYO league in 1969.Hughes was born in Brockton but his family moved to Swampscott when he was a baby. He graduated from St. John’s Preparatory School in 1950 and Holy Cross College in 1954. He and his wife, Nancy, have three daughters ? Patricia Hughes of Watertown, Kim Floutsakos who lives in Greece, and Kristin Hughes, an athletic director at Cleveland Heights High School in Ohio and a former college coach for 16 years.Past president of the Tedesco Country Club, where he was a member for 48 years, Hughes retains his love of golf.”I resigned from Tedesco after all those years. I won’t go into why. Just say I’m a hard-headed Irishman,” he said.