That he had authoritative knowledge of the details of the life-insurance business and is also an able execntive needs no further voucher than the statement that Mr. Mayer holds the responsible office of manager of the Missouri State Life Insurance Company for the State of Kansas. He maintains his administrative headquarters and his residence at Wichita and is one of the popular and progressive citizens of this vigorous city of the Sunflower State.
Mr. Mayer was born in Coblentz, Germany, and in the excellent schools of his native place he acquired his early education, which was supplemented by a higher course of study in the Christian Brothers’ College in Belgium. He was a lad of sixteen years when he accompanied his parente on their immigration to America, and the family home was established in the City of Topeka, Kansas, where the subject of this review continued his studies in the public schools, further showed his ambition by attending night schools also and eventually by the completion of a thorough course in the Standard Shorthand School of Topeka, from which he received a diploma. As a skilled bookkeeper he was employed in the office of his uncle, in Topeka, until 1898, in which year he initiated his specially successful career in connection with the life-insurance business. He went to the City of St. Louis, Missouri, where he remained until 1903, when he was appointed as state manager in Kansas for the Hartford Life Insurance Company with headquarters at Wichita. In 1913 the company mentioned was consolidated with the Missouri State Life Insurance Company, and Mr. Mayer had been from that time to the present the manager of the company’s business in the State of Kansas. Under his vigorous and progressive regime the business of the company had been splendidly expanded in Kansas, and is on a most substantial and successful basis. Mr. Mayer had under his supervision about twenty-five branch agencies; and the local agency recently established in the City of Wichita is turning in a remarkably large amount of business to the company.
Mr. Mayer is a charter member of the Kansas organization of the National Life Underwriters’ Association, and was elected its first president. He is affiliated with the Benevolent & Protective Order of Elks, had been for many years an officer of the Knights of Columbus, is actively identified with leading German societies in Kansas and is a zealous communicant of the Catholic Church, in the faith of which he was reared. The maiden name of his wife was Mae Spellman and they have two children –Celeste and Russell.
