He's Working To Insure A Long Life

Shortly before noon every weekday, Floyd Hamel leaves the Queen Anne district where he has lived for almost 60 years, climbs into his 1964 Mercedes-Benz and drives to a parking lot at One Union Square.

Nattily dressed in slacks, sweater, bow tie and tweed jacket with a handkerchief precisely folded in the breast pocket, Hamel walks to The College Club at Fifth and Madison, where he has been a member since 1944.

There, he takes his seat at the club's famous roundtable, around which many of Seattle's leaders - past and present - gather to eat lunch and swap stories.

Hamel orders a hearty meal, laughs at the jokes, tells a few of his own and allows himself several cups of real coffee. After lunch, he pays a visit to the club's library, where he pores over daily newspapers from around the country and catches a few winks of sleep.

At about 3 p.m., Hamel walks back to One Union Square, nodding pleasantly to passers-by, marveling at the skyscrapers that have sprouted in Seattle in recent years.

After riding up to the 34th floor, he enters an office in Hamel Insurance Agency, where he sorts through papers, makes telephone calls and services insurance accounts, many of which are more than 40 years old.

The office staff leaves at

4 p.m. Hamel stays until about 7, then heads for home.

Floyd Hamel is not 75, 85 or 95. He's 97. And to the inevitable question, ``How much longer?'' he responds with a smile.''

``Oh, I'm thinking of retiring Jan. 21, 1993.''

That's the day he turns 100. It's also the day his present driver's license expires. He may renew it; he may not. ``I'll decide when that day comes,'' he says. ``I don't want to be rushed.''

When Hamel's friends retired, he continued to work. When they died off, he continued to work. That, he says, may be one of the secrets to his long life. But he doesn't discount genes or personal habits. The cousins on one side of the family ``all lived to be over 90,'' and he has never smoked, has drank very little, ate heartily and could work 12-to-15-hour days when he was young.

Hamel's longtime friend, R.C. ``Torchy'' Torrance, 90, laughingly says Hamel may be carrying the Fountain of Youth too far.

``The way Floyd works, you'd think he was about 50,'' says Torrance. ``The only problem is, he's going to live so long he won't have any pallbearers.''

Hamel was born in Lexington, Neb., a little town on the mainline of the railroad, ``where there were few distractions when you were growing up.'' When he was 12, his parents moved to Salem, Ore.

After graduating from high school in 1912, he worked in a restaurant. There was, he says, slack time every afternoon. So he ducked around the corner to attend a business school, learning an invaluable skill - shorthand. Five months aboard a cannery vessel in Alaska provided enough money for college.

Instead of enrolling in the University of Oregon, he journeyed to Seattle ``because it seemed smarter to me to go to school in a big city, where there would be more job opportunities.'' He majored in history, joined Phi Kappa Sigma fraternity (he was honored last year as the oldest living member of the fraternity), carried a Post-Intelligencer paper route in the morning, and did secretarial work for the deans of the chemistry and journalism departments.

``You won't believe it, but in 1914, there was no tuition for out-of-state students,'' says Hamel. ``The next year, they started charging us - something like $20 a semester.''

They were great times to be a student, says Hamel. The bursar, Herbert Condon (Condon Hall), ``became my benefactor, finding me jobs on the campus.'' There were brilliant professors like Vernon Louis Parrington (Parrington Hall), later to win the Pulitzer prize for literature.

Gil Dobie's football teams were undefeated, year after year. Hiram Conibear's crews became national powers. When Dobie was fired, because he insisted on playing a member of the team who had been caught cheating in class, Hamel ``joined the mob that marched in protest.''

``On sober reflection, I now realize it was not wise to try to save a coach involved in shady ethics, no matter how good he was,'' says Hamel.

Hamel graduated in the class of '18. He still wears his class beanie to football and basketball games (he's had season tickets since the '40s), and the license plate on his Mercedes is ``UDUB18.'' The plate invariably attracts attention, says Hamel.

``I've lost track of the number of times someone has pulled alongside me at a stoplight, rolled down the window and asked, `Did you really graduate from the U in 1918?' I say, `I sure did!'''

Immediately after graduation, Hamel enlisted in the Navy, joining 4,000 others in a ``tent city pitched right where the medical school is now located.'' Ninety days later, he was commissioned as an ensign. A few months after that, World War I was history.

After leaving the Navy, Hamel joined the Westinghouse Co., married and spent more than eight years traveling for the company in 13 states. Tired of travel, Hamel returned to Seattle in 1927 and began selling insurance.

In 1940, he established his own general-insurance agency.

``I was in my middle years then (age 47), and, like a lot of my friends, looking forward to retirement in 15 or 20 years. When the time came, they retired and I didn't. Now I can't ask them if they made the right decision, because they're all buried.''

Hamel Insurance Agency now includes three generations of Hamels - Hamel; his son Roderick Hamel Sr. and his grandson Roderick Hamel Jr.

When the eldest Hamel - a bit hard of hearing - ``comes down the hall, you can hear him a long time before you see him,'' says his grandson. Then he adds:

``My grandpa always seem to come into the office in an upbeat mood. He's very outgoing and communicative, and very conscientious with his customers. He still sends all of them birthday cards.''

Staying interested in people and in life may be the greatest secret of all to longevity, says Hamel.

``Many things have changed for the better and some for the worse; the important thing is to be around to see the change.''

But there's one thing that has remained unchanged for as long as he has lived, says Hamel - the one immutable law of business.

``You can have resumes from here to the next block when you come out of school. But getting a good job still seems to revolve around the people you know or the people your parents know.''