State Farm In The Community

From the Pantagraph:

A letter to the editor the other day questioned Bloomington-based State Farm Insurance Cos., wondering if the company does enough for the community in which it resides.

I don’t care to get directly involved in the letter writer’s issue.

State Farm does employ 15,100 people here.

It does pay millions in local taxes each year.

It does keep a solid influx of newbies dropping in on B-N, keeping it a little more fresh perhaps than, say, a Peoria, with its industrial Caterpillar.

It puts so much money into studies at Illinois State University that, just last week, the university renamed a huge building the State Farm Hall of Business.

But have you ever thought about what this town would be like without State Farm?

Ever mulled what would have happened if founder George J. Mecherle — instead of launching his company in 1922 — had just kept farming in Merna and not started his company, which then was a three-employee operation, but today has 65,900 employees nationwide, and 18,000 agents?

There’d be no Mecherle Drive.

State Farm Plaza probably would still be mud and a series of Funks Hybrid signs.

Bloomington would be without its tallest building not related to higher learning.

We’d probably be nothing more than a small college town, like Charleston or Macomb or Carbondale — 25,000 people, not 130,000.

Unit 5 and District 87 wouldn’t have all those schools. Veterans Parkway would probably still just be a belt around town. Two lanes might have been more than enough.

Eastside subdivisions like Hawthorne Hills and Hedgewood would probably still be more like Soybean Plains and Lotsa Corn Way.
Almost every baseball field and athletic complex in America would not have one of those “State Farm” signs hanging somewhere.

Rust would only bring to mind oxidized metal or a Ziebart check-up, not a company CEO.

There’d be more tractor pulls, but fewer retail, food or other choices, and not nearly as many coupons in the Sunday paper.

The airport would still be a hangar, a weather vane and a concrete strip used predominantly by weekend Pipers.

If you do a bit of research and scroll back issues of The Pantagraph, you discover that 1922 was a big year in Bloomington-Normal — although no one at the time probably realized it.

The first paved road from Bloomington to Chicago was finished, opening a “new era in transportation,” as it was hailed it. Today it is Interstate 55.

For the first time, 5-year-olds began going to school here. They called it “kindergarten.”

Officials announced a broadening of the county’s “summer youth agricultural exposition” and started calling it “a 4-H Fair.” It remains today.

Interestingly, in 1922, Bloomington-Normal’s population had shrunk to 32,868 (Bloomington’s was 27,725; Normal’s was 5,143) and officials were quoted in The Pantagraph as saying they were growing worried about a population spiral that had wedged us behind Danville in a head count.

That’s when Mecherle, at age 45, decided after 25 years of farming it was time to do something else with his life.
... and auto.
... and fire.

Today, his mid-life gambit has millions of customers.

By George, it appears he made it.

And, it appears, via George, he made Bloomington-Normal, too.