Staying power: Founder of Lette Insurance Agency, at 96, still puts in a full day's work
The founding partner of Lette Insurance Agency got her first taste of Rio Grande Valley life in 1929, the year Wall Street crashed and ushered in the Great Depression, and the year Lette’s family relocated to Brownsville from Meridian, Miss.
Lette’s bank examiner father had been hired by a New Orleans bank to look after a large estate the bank had substantial interest in. He fell in love with the Valley and sent for the wife and kids in September 1929, just in time for the school year. Maude Lette was 16 years old and Brownsville’s population at the time was about 40,000.
"We all liked it," she says. "We liked the people. Brownsville was a very nice, clean town. It didn’t take you long to be aquainted with everyone."
Lette’s grandfather had an insurance agency in Quitman County, Miss., When he died in 1936, Lette’s father sent her Mississippi to keep the agency going. Lette had no experience running and insurance agency. It was sink or swim, and Lette swam for three years before returning to Brownsville.
She left again to attend the U.S. Fidelity & Guaranty insurance institute in Baltimore, where she also met her future husband, Elmer. The couple settled in Brownsville after the wedding. It was back to Mississippi once again for the duration of World War II. Afterward, it was back to Brownsville yet again.
Lette worked for Dodd Mitchell Insurance Agency in Brownsville for 14 years before buying out the last survivor of three partners and decided to start her own agency. It was 1970 – a very tough time for women in business.
An insurance agent can’t do much without policies to sell, and in those days insurance companies didn’t take women agents seriously. Lette’s connection with the industry through her ownership of Dodd Mitchell is the thing that allowed her to do business.
Ada Duarte, a longtime friend and another of Brownsville’s female business pioneers, experienced the same bias against women in the early 1970s after her husband died and she was left to run the family’s realty and insurance business enterprises on her own.
"Businesses were mostly run by men," Duarte says. "Bankers were mostly men. They didn’t think women had sense enough to come in from the rain. I had a very, very hard time, so I know where she’s coming from. Now it’s so very different."
Duarte, who is semi-retired, describes Lette as "persistent and very responsible."
"When she has a task to do she goes at it," Duarte says. "She doesn’t give up. I would say she still has a lot of stamina. She is the cream of the crop. She really is an outstanding member of the community."
Lette realizes some people occasionally take an alternative view of insurance agents.
"They think we’re just selling," she says. "Most of it’s service. A lawyer can charge so much an hour. What is our charge? Nothing. Our commission is very small nowadays. It’s a challenge to pay your payroll and your rent."
Still, Lette is fascinated by the insurance business – staying on top of the countless details and constant change. It’s not for everybody, she concedes, but thinks people who don’t like details probably shouldn’t be in the business.
She sees similarities between 1970 and today. Then, South Texas was still reeling from Hurricane Beulah in September 1967. Insurers effectively stopped writing windstorm policies east of U.S. 77. Now Hurricane Dolly has had a similar effect on insurers: If you can find a windstorm policy, the deductible is likely to be high, Lette says.
Lette’s two partners in the agency are her son, Jim, and his wife, Alicia. Jim Lette says his mother is "persistent and consistent" with a cool, calm head.
"She doesn’t let anything bother her," he says. "That’s a good attitude to have, period."
That said, Lette wishes more family members would get involved and that the firm survives her retirement – if indeed it ever comes. She still works at the office full time.
"We would like to see some others in the family interested in it, but I think they find other things more profitable," Lette says. "It’s very hard to get anyone interested. They don’t understand this business. They would got a lot of pleasure out of it if they understood it."