MODERN WOODMEN of AMERICA - About Us

Modern Woodmen of America, Rock Island, Ill., has announced that Dr. Charles A. Chance, Knoxville, Tenn., will retire from the Modern Woodmen Board of Directors, effective March 31, 2002.

Chance has served on the fraternal life insurer’s seven-member board of directors since July 1987, and has been a member of Modern Woodmen since 1958. He also held national offices in Modern Woodmen's representative form of government.

Chance is a professor and graduate-program coordinator for the Holistic Teaching/Learning Unit at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn. He is a member of the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Education Research Association and the American Association of University Professors. He is also active as a deacon in his church.

Modern Woodmen has also announced the appointment of W. Kenny Massey, LeClaire, Iowa, to the board of directors. Massey began his Modern Woodmen career in 1982 and has held sales and sales management positions. He served as agency manager of Modern Woodmen’s Louisiana West agency for nine years before joining the home office staff as the organization’s director of agencies in 1997. He will continue to serve in this position.

Massey holds a business degree from Mississippi State University and has earned the Fraternal Insurance Counsellor Fellow (FICF) designation. He has also completed the Kinder Advanced Management Academy, the Purdue University Professional Management Institute and the Agency Management Training Council. Massey is currently president of the Fraternal Field Managers Section of the National Fraternal Congress of America (NFCA), and serves on the President’s Advisory, Product Study and Fraternal Committees at Modern Woodmen.

Additionally, Modern Woodmen Director, Treasurer and Investment Manager Gary E. Stoefen, Davenport, Iowa, announced his retirement from his position as Treasurer and Investment Manager, effective April 1, 2002. He will continue to serve on the board of directors, to which he was appointed in March 1990.

Stoefen began his Modern Woodmen career in 1961 and has served in investment analyst and management positions. He became the organization’s treasurer and investment manager in 1978.

Stoefen is a member of the Investment Analysts Society of Chicago and is past president and a member of the Fraternal Investment Association. He also served as chairperson of the NFCA’s Investment Management Valuations Committee for many years.

He has served on the United Way of the Quad Cities Planning Committee, the Business Advisory Board of St. Ambrose University and on Rock Island’s Downtown 2000 Steering Committee. He is also a member of the Union League Club of Chicago, serves as director and treasurer of the Quad City Development Finance Committee and serves on the Investment Committee for the Community Foundation of the Great River Bend.

Modern Woodmen is a fraternal life insurance society, serving more than 750,000 members nationwide, through products and services for family financial security and fraternal service programs for communities.