My Thanksgiving Wishes

From Me and The Zalma Family to You

My family and I have much to be thankful for this year. Our three adult children are healthy and successful, our grandson is a college graduate and working in IT for a major corporation and our granddaughter is 8 years old and a truly beautiful and loving child.

I am personally in good health, walking four to five miles a day, and in retirement working only six to eight hours a day doing what I love the most, writing about insurance, insurance claims, insurance law and acting as an insurance claims consultant and expert witness.

I am thankful for you, my friends, clients and readers of “Zalma’s Insurance Fraud Letter,” my blog “Zalma on Insurance,” and my books and other writing.

As a first generation American I am honored to join with all Americans the ability to celebrate Thanksgiving that started when the United States was a dream and just a colony of Great Britain to give thanks for the good things in life at least once a year. It took Abraham Lincoln, our greatest President, to make it an official holiday. The Thanksgiving holiday gives me and my family the opportunity to consider the blessings we have received and to thank all who have made it possible.

Please allow me this opportunity to explain to you all the things I, and my family, can give thanks for:

I have loved my wife of 58 years since we first met when she was nine and I was twelve.
I am thankful that she still loves me and lets me make clear every day that I love her more now than I did when she ignored me when I was 12.
My three adult children who are successes in their own right.
That my three children, my grandson and my eight-year-old granddaughter live nearby, put up with my wife and I, and are healthy, successful, and mostly happy in what they do.
That my grandson is now a graduate of  Puget Sound University in Washington state and employed full time.
My clients who, for the more than 46 years have allowed me to earn a living doing what I love: practicing law until I let my license go inactive, acting as a consultant, testifying as an expert witness and writing materials to help others provide excellence in claims services as members of the insurance profession.
My publishers the American Bar Association, Full Court Press, Fastcase.com, Thomson Reuters, ClaimSchool, Inc. and Amazon.com.
My dearly departed parents and grandparents for having the good sense to leave the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the 20th Century so we could avoid the Holocaust and I could be born American.
My country for giving me a place to live and work in peace and complain about it without fear.
The state of California, where I was born, and have lived for 83 years, for allowing me to have my home and grow my family, and the ability to pay the high taxes for the privilege.
Those of you who read what I write and gain something from it.
Eighty three years of mostly good health, but for a small heart attack and clogged arteries, and a new Aortic Heart Valve that gave me the ability to continue to work – albeit at a reduced rate.
Allowing me the health and ambition to avoid my cardiologist by walking every day and working on my garden and bonsai.
The hundreds of friends I have never met but with whom the Internet has allowed me to communicate in parts of the world I have never visited.
The wonder of the Internet that allows me to publish E-books, Zalma's Insurance Fraud Letter and my blog instantly on line.
That my family can get together to express our thanks for each other and our happiness this year again without a need for anything but enjoying each other’s company.
That most of you who I know only by my publications can also gather with your families to express your thanks.

When I enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1967 to avoid the draft I volunteered to serve anywhere in the world other than Viet Nam and was sent, with the wisdom only the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps could understand, to Peoria, Illinois where I became a Special Agent in Charge of an office investigating people who sought security clearances. I was well-trained to be an investigator and enjoyed every minute of the job.

Until the Army I had never seen a river without a concrete bottom only to see the mighty Mississippi as my first real river. I had never seen snow other than in the distance on mountains only to find myself shoveling the snow off the driveway in the small half-of-a-house I rented from an old couple who could not do it themselves.

My investigative assignments required me to travel throughout Central Illinois from the Iowa to the Indiana borders. I stopped at court houses along the way, all of which had signs that Abraham Lincoln practiced law there.

Those experiences with the courts, law enforcement officers, and court personnel probably gave me the incentive to become a lawyer.

When I finished my three year enlistment I returned home, proposed marriage to the love of my life, enrolled and began the study of law at night. I found a job where I could use the skills I learned in the Army.

I was hired as a claims trainee at the Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company who spent the time to train me to be a claims adjuster. The training was, unlike what is done at modern insurers, thorough. I was required to read a treatise on insurance and insurance claims handling. I was sent out with experienced adjusters in all types of insurance Fireman’s Fund wrote, and eventually allowed to deal with the public under close supervision. Contrary to what was done in the insurance industry at the time, I was allowed to study law at night while I worked as a full-time insurance adjuster with the Fireman’s Fund.

I was fortunate enough to work for a claims manager – Coleman T. Mobley – who did not require me to go out of state to adjust major storm claims if it interfered with my law school studies. Since I was in law school 50 weeks a year the only storm duty I was required to work was a fire storm that burned from the San Fernando Valley to the ocean at Malibu. Because of Mr. Mobley and the Fireman’s Fund I was able to complete my studies and pass the California Bar in 1971 and I was admitted to the California Bar on January 2, 1972.

I took a cut in pay to get my first job as an Associate Attorney with a law firm that was willing to teach me to be a lawyer handling every kind of problem a new lawyer could face from wills, tort claims, divorce, drunk driving, trials, depositions, and dozens of orders to show cause in multiple courts around the Inland Empire of California. By doing so, when I started practicing law in 1972, I became a lawyer who could deal with any issue brought to me.

I was fortunate enough to move to an insurance law firm in Century City, Los Angeles, California where I was assigned to a coverage lawyer who was trying to deal with over 500 active matters. When I arrived for my first day at the new firm I was assigned 250 of the matters and the partner pointed me to the firm’s library to learn what to do.

At the time new technology was an IBM Selectrict typewriter that could erase errors from the keyboard without the need to use white-out paint. I did legal research in the firm’s large library which, when it was inadequate for the task, I had to drive to the County Law Library in downtown Los Angeles. Research in a large library took days to find support for an issue. I needed three professional legal secretaries to keep up with my dictation.

Now, using modern technology, I can do the same legal research in 30 minutes on Fastcase.com, need no secretary, and can operate my consulting, writing, training and publishing businesses with no employees.

In 1979 I decided it was time to be my own boss. I started a law firm called Barry Zalma, Inc. with a secretary who came from my last firm and brought an IBM Selectric typewriter with her into a small windowless office. I had obtained a line of credit from a bank that I hoped would carry my family's expenses until the practice started since the only case I was sure of was my sister’s rear-ender from which I could not take a fee. The office was furnished with a file cabinet from my father-in-law’s dental practice and a dining room table from my wife’s grandmother who had passed away.

I received my first call at 8:10 a.m. on the first day, October 1, 1979, and my practice began. I had nothing to do on October 3, 1979 so I wrote an article for publication.

After that I had no peace and the firm quickly grew to 9 lawyers and a staff to serve them all defending people who were insured and acting as coverage counsel for insurers who needed advice to resolve coverage issues and defense of bad faith suits.

I was more successful than I ever expected. I, whose experience was limited to Los Angeles County and Central Illinois, found a need to travel to Taipei, Taiwan and London, England on behalf of my clients. I worked, as I had learned from my father who survived the Depression, 16 hours a day six or seven days a week.

When I became 75 years old my firm had been reduced to a sole practice and I decided it was time to stop practicing law and become a consultant and fulfill my childhood dream to be an author. I asked the California Bar to put my license to practice law into an inactive status and stopped acting as a lawyer.

I am a very lucky and happy man. I do work that I love. I fulfilled my childhood dreams to be an author. I Live in a home I have owned for more than 50 years that my wife and I adapted and increased as children were born to meet our needs. I have the love of my life with me and look forward to celebrating our 59th wedding anniversary next month.

I am honored that my eldest daughter has come back to live with us and care for my wife and I who are not able to do everything we used to do. My son shares my office building running his business Metatouch Therapeutic Massage and has time to visit with me as allowed by his busy schedule.

I hope, on this Thanksgiving weekend, that you can join my family and me remembering that it is more important to think about our blessings and those things that we have to be thankful for than to get in line for “Black Friday” to buy an inexpensive flat screen t.v. or tablet.

Enjoy the holiday and your family as I will enjoy the holiday and my family.

(c) 2025 Barry Zalma & ClaimSchool, Inc.

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