Faulkner, Edwin J. (Edwin Jerome), 1911-1992
Biography
Edwin J. Faulkner (1911-1992) was an insurance-industry leader in a time of both technological and social change. Self-admittedly “born into the insurance business”, he succeeded his grandfather, Dr. A.O. Faulkner, his father, Edwin J. Faulkner, and his uncle, Albert E. Faulkner, as president of the Woodmen Accident Company, founded in 1890 by Dr. Faulkner. Prior to becoming company president in 1938, Faulkner graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1932, the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce of the University of Pennsylvania in 1934, and worked from 1934 for the company. Faulkner’s home was always Lincoln and his loyalties always Nebraskan, but he also became a national influence and an important leader in the insurance industry. In terms of other responsibilities, the collection shows that he served in various ways the University of Nebraska, Nebraska Wesleyan University, Doane College, the Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission, and Bryan Memorial Hospital. He was campaign manager for Carl Curtis in 1966.
Faulkner served as chairman of the insurance industry Joint Committee on Health Insurance which in 1956 organized the Health Insurance Association of America to provide a united voice for the insurance industry, which Faulkner as its first president. In the late 1970s (1979) Faulkner established a lectureship at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, at the College of Business, that bears his name.
Faulkner thought that “the central area of controversy” between the forces of “free enterprise and democracy” and the forces favoring “regimented economy and the totalitarian state” would be health care; and to the struggle to preserve his idea of free enterprise and democracy he directed much endeavor.
