Husson honors Woodrow Cross Alum labored to combie faith, work

BANGOR – Husson College awarded alumnus Woodrow W. Cross an honorary doctorate of business administration at its 2006 commencement exercises on May 13. He was recognized for his lifelong combining of entrepreneurship and faith.

“Today, in his 90th year of life, Woodrow W. Cross spends his weekdays heading what, I believe, is the largest privately held, independent insurance agency in New England,” said Husson College President William Beardsley. “Yet, he also owns Lamb’s Book and Bible Store on Stillwater Avenue in Bangor, which he operates with a sense of mission to serve his faith community.

“One vocation is mostly about the material world, the other is mostly about belief,” Beardsley said. “In Woodrow Cross, these values are intertwined. He is a living testament to the American dream and what it means to be a person of faith. What a role model for other graduates.”

Cross was born and raised in Bradford. As a young boy in the 1920s, he rode his pony from farm to farm selling seed. He took out his first $100 loan from the Eastern Maine Grange Company at age 12.

“Paid back in full,” he would hasten to add with a glint in his eye. Cross served his nation in the Pacific in World War II and then returned to manage the Bradford General Store.

Today, Cross Insurance, the Bangor-based family business he started on a kitchen table in 1954, employs more than 300 people, and premiums issued each year have a face value of more than $200 million. Cross remains the owner and CEO of the business, a dominant insurance presence in northern New England. And, his plans include further expansion and diversification.

“But Lamb’s is a different kind of success for Woodrow Cross. It has a different sort of bottom line,” Beardsley said. “It satisfies a different need. While breaking even is certainly a goal, it seems his real mission is to provide Maine people with Bibles, faith-based literature, instruments, gifts and music. I believe the real profit, here, for Mr. Cross, is tallied in his heart. It runs side by side with Calvary Baptist Church of Brewer, where he has been a member for 50 years. Husson believes it is this combination of work and faith that gives the true measure of this man.”