Samuel W. Madara, 87, insurance broker
In the 1970s and 1980s, Samuel W. Madara and his wife, Connie, traveled overseas several times to share ideas about insurance "with a broad group of insurance people," she said.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Samuel W. Madara and his wife, Connie, traveled overseas several times to share ideas about insurance "with a broad group of insurance people," she said.
They and others in their group were not simply Americans bringing their methods to other cultures, she said, but were also learning in seminars from foreign insurers.
"It was an exchange of ideas peculiar in China" at the time, she said in a phone interview, because in the days before private enterprise, "they were all government workers."
On Sunday, Sept. 7, Mr. Madara, 87, former president of the Madara Co., his family's insurance brokerage, died of heart failure at the health center of the Evergreens, the retirement community in Moorestown, where he had lived for the last two years.
In 1961, he completed studies for, and was named a charter property casualty underwriter by, the Institutes in Malvern.
He was president of the CPCU South Jersey chapter for a time and, for 10 years, served on the CPCU Foreign Trip and Seminar Committee, which took him and his wife to China and other nations.
Mr. Madara "was very proud" of being an underwriter, his wife said, in no small part because "our children were very small, and he had to hide away to study."
He grew up in Merchantville, graduated from Merchantville High School in 1944, and earned a bachelor's in mathematics at Ursinus College in 1947, completing a V-12 program to become a Navy officer.
He served 16 years in the Navy Reserve, retiring as a lieutenant commander.
After college graduation, Mr. Madara joined the Madara Co., the firm founded in 1918 by his father, J. Clarence Madara, and retired as its president in 1999.
The firm moved from Camden to Merchantville to Mount Laurel, where it became part of another firm in the 2000s, his wife said.
Mr. Madara was president in 1965-66 of the Independent Insurance Agents of New Jersey and won its Person of the Year in 1966.
He was a former president of the board of trustees at Trinity United Methodist Church in Merchantville and a board member of the Methodist Neighborhood Center in Camden, both in the 1960s.
He was a former member of the Moorestown Industrial Planning Board and the Samaritan Hospice Development Committee, and a former director of Midlantic National Bank/South in Mount Laurel.
Mr. Madara was a former trustee for Little Egg Harbor Yacht Club in the 1970s, from which "he loved to take his family and neighbors ocean fishing."
A former president of the New Jersey Society of Pennsylvania, he was a member of the Y Service Club of Moorestown and the Boy Scout Committee for Troop 119 in Merchantville and Troop 44 in Moorestown.
Besides his wife of 61 years, Mr. Madara is survived by sons Steven and David, daughter Suzanne Coffee, and 10 grandchildren. Their daughter, Nancy Secor, died in 2013.
A visitation was set from 6 to 8 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 14, at the Lewis Funeral Home, 78 E. Main St., Moorestown, with a memorial service at 11 a.m. Monday, Sept. 15, at the First United Methodist Church, 446 E. Camden Ave., Moorestown.
Donations may be sent to the Coriell Institute for Medical Research, 403 Haddon Ave., Camden, N.J. 08103 or www.coriell.org.
Condolences may be offered to the family at www.lewisfuneralhomemoorestown.com.
610-313-8134 @WNaedele