Harold J. Richards*
Class of 1970
- Chairman of the Board Fidelity Corporation
To be a success, you sometimes have to make sacrifices.
Harold Richards was born to American parents on a banana plantation in Nicaragua in 1925. He moved to New Orleans and dropped out of high school to work as a longshoreman before joining the U.S. Army Air Corps.
In the Army during World War II, Richards flew 16 combat missions over Japan as a B-29 navigator. After the war, he passed high school completion tests and enrolled in Loyola University in New Orleans. He completed all his accounting courses and moved to Richmond, Virginia.
After four years at A. M. Pullen & Co., Richards became a certified public accountant. In 1953, at age 28, he became the first employee of the new Fidelity Bankers Life Insurance Company of Richmond. Over the next 15 years, Fidelity grew to become one of the nation's largest insurance holding companies, controlling more than $4.5 billion of life insurance and assets of more than $500 million.