By all accounts Don Erway is a nice guy, a loyal friend, an honest person. The kind of man who calls his high school football coach several times a month just to make sure the 85-year-old retiree is OK.
"He was a very good team player," said that former coach, Bill Pfeiff. "He got along very good with the ballplayers and continues to do that."
In fact, old friends in Lincoln and professional acquaintances across the country are puzzled and saddened by the serious financial problems encountered by Erway's company, known formally as National Warranty Insurance Co., a Risk Retention Group. The company is in liquidation.
"It's really unfortunate. He was an upstanding member of the risk retention community," said Karen Cutts, publisher of the Risk Retention Reporter, an online publication that covers the risk retention industry.
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Erway, she said, was "personable, always professional, a very straight shooter type."
Erway would not comment about his company for this story, but he did confirm factual background information.
His local fame is grounded in his achievements as a Lincoln High sports star who won a Sunday Journal and Star high school Athlete of the Year honor for 1953and later played football for the Huskers.
As a 6-foot-1, 190-pound teen, Erway lettered in football, basketball and baseball at Lincoln High.
The football team was undefeated two years in a row and state champ.
His Lincoln friends still talk about those days.
"He was the best athlete in the class," said Sam Van Pelt, who has known Erway since seventh-grade homeroom at what was then Irving Junior High School.
Erway lettered in football and baseball at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As a T-formation quarterback, he scored all 16 points against Kansas Statein a 16-0 triumph during his junior year. And he booted the field goal that beat Iowa State that same year, 1955. He didn't play as a senior because of knee problems.
For one year, Erway played for the Lincoln Chiefs baseball team, which was part of the Pittsburgh Pirates farm system.
Because of his athletic fame, the local papers followed his life events - knee surgery as a college student, a car accident in 1960, heart problems that led to hospitalization in 1958 and, over the years, his rise in state government.
When a rare form of gout in his knees sidelined his professional sports ambitions, the young Erway turned to an insurance career.
After graduating from Nebraska, Erway sold life insurance for New York Life and for a short time worked for a startup company, Quality National. He joined the Nebraska Department of Insurance in 1967, where he worked his way up to deputy director. His bosses included Van Pelt, who later was named a district court judge, and Ben Nelson, who later was elected governor of Nebraska and then U.S. senator.
Erway spent three years as the state's first risk manager, where he coordinated all risk and insurance programs for the state, before leaving state government for the private sector.
In 1984, Erway purchased a small risk management company headquartered in the Cayman Islands. And in recent years, Erway seemed to be making a good living with his company, National Warranty Insurance.
He drove a black Jaguar and traveled between homes he owned in the Palm Springs, Calif., area and Lincoln.
Erway has remained active in the business since liquidators took control of it in June. But he did take the NWIG plates off his car.
He also has announced the formation of a limited liability company with his second wife, Neva.
The father of three grown children is described as honorable, outgoing, likable.
"Don't say anything bad about my friend Don Erway," said David Bossman, president of the American Feed Industry Insurance Company Risk Retention Group based in Des Moines, Ia.
"I thought he was a nice guy. When they (National Warranty) did business with us, everything went perfectly smoothly," said Michael Flynn, vice president of sales for Universal Warranty in Omaha.
Ben Nelson, who provided some legal services for National Warranty in the years before he ran for governor, brought Flynn and Erway together.
"He's a very competitive guy," said Nelson, pointing to Erway's athletic history. "He is also a very approachable person who has made a lot of friends over the years.
"It's a tough business," said Nelson, referring to the service contract industry. "And Don is a competitor. It appears to me he gave it every effort, the kind of effort he put in as quarterback on the football team."
"He's just an easy, pleasant guy to have around," said Van Pelt, who regularly shares morning coffee and local political gossip with a group of Lincoln men that sometimes includes Erway.
"He's one of those people who never bad-mouths anyone," Van Pelt said.
"And you are not going to get anyone to say anything bad about him."
