Longtime Vail Valley insurance broker Will Comerford retiring after 50 years in business
Plans so far include visiting grandkids, and a trip to Arizona for spring training
Scott Miller/Vail Daily
Will Comerford landed in the Vail Valley the way so many people do: looking for the next place to live. He found that, and a career.
Comerford and his first wife left Florida in April of 1974. They built a van they could live in while looking for a place to settle down, traveling from Florida to New England and all the way north to Nova Scotia, Canada. Then they headed west.
The just-out-of-college couple had some ideas of their next place. They wanted to be near a big city, but not in a big city. Driving west, they found the still-young town of Vail, where Comerford first landed a job as a carpenter with the town.
When Comerford’s then-wife broke her leg in a ski accident in early 1975, the couple needed insurance. Will got into the insurance business with State Farm in the fall of that year. He’s been with the company ever since. The first months of the job found him selling to others in town.
“In those days you could knock on doors,” he said. “Or if you hung out at Donovan’s (Copper Bar) you could meet most of the people in town.”
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First office in Crossroads
Comerford eventually opened his first office in the Crossroads building in January of 1976.
Comerford moved the office to Avon in 1980, in a space above Beaver Liquors. The business stayed there for 27 years.
In 2007, Comerford moved his office closer to his home, in Eagle, where he’d lived since 1978.
The move to Eagle came when Comerford drove west to buy new license plates. Back then, Eagle seemed to have “more cows than people,” he recalled. Eagle also had a more temperate climate.
Comerford at the time was managing a condo complex in East Vail. Tulips in Eagle were starting to pop out of the ground in March of that year. Meanwhile East Vail was, well, East Vail, and still pretty well buried in snow.
So in April of that year the Comerfords moved to Eagle. The good news is that his insurance clients happily followed, although in those days, Vail to Eagle was a trip, not to mention a long-distance phone call.
Part of that is the agent, of course, but Comerford is also quick to credit the company he represents. Comerford said he’s “rarely had to apologize” to policy holders over the years.
But the business of insurance can be complicated. For instance, while State Farm still insures clients who live in areas where there’s only one road into and out of a neighborhood 鈥� Eby Creek Mesa, for example 鈥� it no longer insures new clients in those neighborhoods. While the company’s risk is more focused, the next client is probably going be angry, he said.
But with all the changes in the business, Comerford still likes coming into the office. Until he retires at the end of this month, he still comes to the office every day.
“I like solving people’s problems,” he said.
As he eases into retirement, Comerford plans to enjoy his five grandchildren. A baseball fan, he’s also planning a trip to Arizona to take in some spring training games. On “page 27 of the to-do list” is an RV trip to Utah.
Whatever comes, “I’m not going to just sit at home,” he said.
