You think you’ve got balancing issues between work and family. Consider local insurance exec Jim Scanlon. He and his wife, Maureen, have 11 children: eight daughters and three sons, ages 6 through 27.
“You see, I’m adopted and had no immediate blood family, no aunts or uncles or anything,” Scanlon, 52, said. “So I wanted to have a large family. But no question, it’s been challenging.”
How challenging? Imagine having to set up an Excel spreadsheet just to keep track of each child’s after-school games and practice sessions. Then there’s each child’s 16th birthday present: They get a car, but they also get carpool duty to take some of the load off mom and dad.
Oh, and if you thought putting kids through college was expensive: Scanlon says he’s paid for 14 years of college for his children and has 30 to go.
Scanlon is chief executive of Scanlon Guerra Burke Insurance Brokers, a Woodland Hills commercial insurance brokerage founded by his father in 1964.
This month, Scanlon had work-family balancing issues like never before. On Aug. 1, he completed an agreement to merge his company with a Chatsworth insurance company. He’s now chief executive of the combined company.
Just five days later, he walked his 22-year-old daughter Madeline – or as he says, “No. 3” – down the aisle in the first of what he expects will be a nonstop series of weddings.
“Our eldest daughter just got engaged last month and her wedding is set for next year,” he said.
Age Appropriate
To be sure, broker Duncan Lemmon is a cycling fanatic.
The 61-year-old president of Lee & Associates West Los Angeles gets up five or six mornings a week to ride for an hour or two, usually logging 125 to 150 miles a week.
But even for a guy as fit as Lemmon, being age appropriate can have its rewards.
After competing for years against 20- and 30-somethings in his local bicycling group, Lemmon decided last year to found a club for riders 50 and older.
“A lot of people who are 50 don’t want to ride (competitively) with a 25-year-old all the time. They want to do a ride with a group that’s about going out and enjoying a bike ride,” said the Santa Monica resident, who rides a Willier Cento1, an Italian racing bike that cost him $10,000.
The new Santa Monica club, Grand Master Cycling, has been quite a success. Not only has it attracted more than 100 members since its founding, but has been chosen to be the official club sponsor of the cycling competition at the 2013 Senior Olympics to be held in Cleveland.
Lemmon competed in the 2009 Senior Olympics, placing sixth in a 20K road race with an average speed of more than 22 miles an hour. Not bad for a senior citizen.
So after he started the new club, he connected again with his Senior Olympics contacts, who invited Grand Master to take over management of the cycling competition, including timing the event and handing out the medals.
“This exceeded our wildest expectations and has continued to blossom. We’re excited, but I don’t feel that I’m a senior,” he said with a chuckle.
Staff reporters Howard Fine and Jacquelyn Ryan contributed to this column. Page 3 is compiled by Editor Charles Crumpley. He can be reached at [email protected].
