In Memoriam: Joseph Henry Feitelberg, 1935-2024
A civic leader and entrepreneurial insurance executive, who above all else recognized the good in people and always passed that on, died on May 10th
Feitelberg, 89, died while under hospice care in Lincoln, MA.
With a life rooted in faith, family and the state of Massachusetts, Feitelberg was the third generation to run Feitelberg Company, Inc., an independent insurance company that was founded in 1916. Up-and-out at dawn and home after dusk, he was committed to seeing things through whether that be related to business, community, or kinship. In the early 1960s, he led the effort to bring the USS Massachusetts (BB-59), a 680-foot South Dakota class built battleship, to Fall River, Mass., to convert it into a museum ship that continues to welcome thousands of visitors annually.
A clear-eyed realist, who cut to the chase deftly, but precisely, Joe was affable and engaging. Genuinely interested in every individual he encountered, Joe seemed to have automatic recall of each person’s name, (proper spelling included), hometowns, interests and preferred line of conversation. He instinctively connected one person to the next, either by sharing their exchanges with others that day or making introductions between those with mutual interests or needs. “No one is as smart as all of us,” he often explained.
Decades before social media existed, his advice was simple – “It’s all about networking.”
Born and raised in Fall River, MA, his father Henry Joseph Feitelberg led Feitelberg Insurance, and his mother Mary Kepple Feitelberg worked as a telephone operator. With his younger sister Nancy and brother John David, Joe spent childhood summers at Priscilla Beach in Plymouth, MA. The loss of their mother as youngsters inevitably shaped their outlook on the world, but never dimmed their spirits and good heartedness.
His Jesuit education started at the Cranwell Preparatory School. Months before his graduation in 1952, he and a few classmates had stridently tried to save another friend from drowning in an icy lake. That impressed upon him not only the fragility of life, but the importance of common sense. A graduate of the College of the Holy Cross, Feitelberg earned a degree in business and managerial economics in 1956.
In the summer of 1956, he started three years of Destroyer active duty service in the US Navy. Later he would serve additional years in the U.S. Naval Reserve Surface Division Center in Fall River. During that time, he met a Manhattanville College classmate of his sister’s, Sheila Dunne, who would later become his wife of 56 years. She predeceased him in 2016. They had a family of six children and lived in Fall River, and later moved to Westport, MA. He and his wife spent their later years in Boston. Inveterate travelers, they liked to plan their next adventures while returning from their last one. But Joe liked nothing better than a walk on Baker’s Beach in Westport, MA or sail in a Sunfish in Harwichport, MA.
In 1963, when the U.S. Navy announced that the USS Massachusetts, a battleship that had been built for World War II, would be stricken from the reserve fleet, Feitelberg founded the USS Massachusetts Memorial Committee, a barebones operation that was set up to raise the funds needed to purchase the warship from the Navy. That effort included what today would be considered crowdfunding – a donation campaign for children in the state. Asked to head up the committee in 1965, Feitelberg recalled years later, ”I told them it was a job I had not aspired to.” But he took on the challenge and Battleship Cove continues to thrive today.
But salvaging the battleship from ruin took some persuading in the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. Feitelberg, who had never seen the USS Massachusetts, arrived for a meeting with Gov. Frank Sargent with a letter telling him exactly what was needed, and a drafted response for him to make it easy. When asked, Feitelberg, who was then a Naval Reserve lieutenant, liked to say that he “had signed for it, sight unseen.”
He also recalled how the signing with Democrats and Republicans in Sen. Edward Kennedy’s office “was bipartisan all the way.” Feitelberg said.
He also was shocked to see the USS Massachusetts’ condition when it passed beneath the Braga Bridge en route to its new berth in the summer of 1965. Watching that happen with then Gov. John Volpe, Feitelberg was asked, “’What if all of this doesn’t work?’” Feitelberg replied, “Governor, if that happens, I think you might own it.”
The civic risk did succeed. Feitelberg served as president of the USS Massachusetts Memorial Committee for a decade, before moving aside to give way to a younger successor with new ideas. He helped start the Historic Naval Ships Association, and organized its first meeting – on the USS Massachusetts – to draft plans to help naval museums grow. That association now has 110 organizations with 183 vessels. His naval ties were clear in the flag he hung on a wall at home that read, “Don’t Give Up the Ship!”
In the summer of 1972, the father of six enrolled in Harvard Business School’s advanced management program. An early adapter to the concept of continuous quality improvement, Feitelberg was a founder and chairman of the Best Practices Presidential Commission of the Independent Agents & Brokers Association of America from 1992 through 1997. His longtime friend and fellow insurance executive Jim Kilbride once described his zeal for systemizing higher levels of performance, “Talking to Joe about Best Practices is like being sprayed by ether.”
In 2003, the Feitelberg Company, Inc. was sold to Citizens Financial Group of Providence and the bank’s parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland. In 2003, he was named vice chairman of insurance and senior vice president of the Citizens Financial Group. The Feitelberg Company is now HUB International New England, LLC.
Later in life Feitelberg and his wife were dedicated members of the Order of Malta. Through his board membership of the order’s North American prison ministry apostolate board, he periodically put to practice visiting federal prisons including San Quentin. Ever hopeful for humankind, this country and the world, Feitelberg repeatedly shared his life’s motto, “Onward.”
In 2017, he was honored with the Casper J. Knight award from the National Historic Naval Ships Association. His professional accolades and affiliations included receiving A Doctor of Business Administration from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth; the 1996 Woodward Memorial award from the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and the 1994 Boston Board of Fire Underwriters’ “Person of the Year” award. He also served on the board of directors for the Council of Insurance Agents & Brokers; the ACORD Corp., the Bank of Boston’s southeastern region, and the Fall River National Bank. He also was a member of the governing committee of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Automobile Reinsurers; and served as president of the Fall River Regional Task Force and oversaw a 15-year reconstruction program for the school department, and a past member of the board of directors and former president of the USS Massachusetts Memorial Committee, Inc.
Feitelberg also served as a board of governors member for the Caritas Christi Health System; chairman of the American Association of the Order of Malta’s Boston area, which includes Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine; a member of the Archdiocese of Boston’s operations and financial review and implementation groups; a member of the board of directors for the Rose Hawthorne Lathrop Cancer Home; invested in the Order of Malta, invested in the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem; chairman of the Fall River Area Council, St. Anne’s Hospital Corp. trustee; Catholic Charities Appeal chairman and invested as a Knight of St. Gregory.
Mr. Feitelberg is survived by his daughters Mary Patricia Feitelberg of Fall River, MA, Susan Feitelberg of New York, NY, his son John Feitelberg and wife Polly of Westport, MA, his daughters Jane MacKeen and husband Michael of Sudbury, MA, Rosemary Feitelberg of New York, NY and Christopher Smith; and his son Mark Feitelberg and wife Elizabeth of Wayland, MA. He is also survived by his twelve grandchildren; John Henry Feitelberg, Hannah Feitelberg and husband Jeremy Naylor, Ben and Paulina Feitelberg; Catherine, Caroline, Jack and Mary MacKeen, Elsie, Grace and Whitney Feitelberg and Thomas Lejeune, and his great grandson Luke Naylor; his brother Karl Feitelberg and wife Sonya and several nieces and nephews.
In addition to his wife, Joe is predeceased by his mother Mary Kepple Feitelberg, his father Henry Joseph Feitelberg, and Ann (Kuss) Feitelberg; his sisters Nancy Keating and Barbara Feitelberg Vasconcellos and his brother John David Feitelberg.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the Special Olympics of Massachusetts, 512 Forest Street, Marlborough, MA 01752 or www.specialolympicsma.org
