Board of Directors of Aetna Insurance Company paid tribute to Charles E. Gross

According to the record of the meeting, Gross had additionally served as a “legal adviser,” but the record isn’t clear if he had advised the board or the finance committee.  The printing was then not clear as to the year he began as legal adviser, but it appears to be 1892.

1. Charles E. Gross was elected a director of Aetna Insurance Company on February 15, 1893.
2. Gross became a member of finance committee of the board of directors of the Aetna Insurance Company on January 18, 1894.
3. Gross died on December 31, 1924.

The article quoted the minute from the meeting record at length and, apparently, in its entirety.

1. “Although Mr. Gross had reached the age when his passing at any time might have been anticipated, he seemed to us to have been granted strength for years to come and his strength we had come to rely upon through custom of many years.”
2. “In this short minute, it is impossible to describe adequately the obligations of this company to Mr. Gross, nor could we, even if it were fitting here, give proper tribute to what other corporations and institutions owe to him and his memory.”
3. “Mr. Gross had wide and varied interests; he had large attainments by nature and training; he had a sterling character. No one word or single phrase can sum up the whole of any man – much less of Mr. Gross, whose activities were many and whose life touched and powerfully influenced the life of many others.”
4. “Mr. Gross never, by oversight, much less by intention, forgot the Aetna’s traditions of honesty and service. Great though these traditions be, our ideal is greater.  In upholding this ideal, he was a leader among us all, executives, directors, agents and employees.  Gross never failed the Aetna Insurance Company in its ideal of corporate honor.”

Unattributed, “Aetna Directors Eulogize Gross,” Hartford Courant, February 3, 1925, page 2.  Accessed February 27, 2018.