People have been trying to get David Goodbread to play basketball all his life. Because he's 6 feet 6 inches tall, that's understandable, but he'd rather be on the pitcher's mound in a baseball game.

Actually, when he's not sitting in his office at Insurance Services of Augusta, he had rather be behind the wheel of a 40-year-old Chevrolet Corvette or a Dodge Dart.

After a 17-year absence, Mr. Goodbread returned to the 90-year-old insurance company in the summer to lead it after Dick Blanchard's retirement. Mr. Blanchard, the majority stakeholder is 67 now, working part time with plans to leave in December.

Mr. Blanchard, a self-proclaimed recluse, hopes to fade away -- no retirement party.

The past few months together have mended some of the hurt feelings from Mr. Goodbread's departure in the 1990s.

"The big reason to come back was to reunite with Dick and make things full circle," Mr. Goodbread said.

Mr. Blanchard has abdicated his ground-floor office to Mr. Goodbread, spending his shortened work schedule in a makeshift office on the second floor. To save time later, he hasn't decorated.

On Mr. Goodbread's wall, however, there's a message of not quitting, although visitors need to ask him about the Ty Cobb memorabilia to get to it.

"I like that he never quit," Mr. Goodbread said. "I don't think I'd have wanted to live next to the guy, but he was one of the top three players of all time."

Among his bobble-head dolls is a Ty Cobb bobble-foot, a testament to the baseball great's renowned spikes-up slides.

Insurance Services of Augusta has been around since Cobb's days in baseball, starting out as McAuliffe Realty Co. The real estate firm had an insurance division. In the 1960s, the company did away with its real estate division.

Technically, the company is still called McAuliffe Realty, but it operates under the Insurance Services name to prevent confusion, Mr. Goodbread said.

The firm has never been a walk-in kind of business.

"We have clients we've had for a long time. The agents' creed says to take care of clients first and the company second and us third. We try to stick with that," he said.

Augusta National Golf Club was once one of those clients, he said, though that account ended in the 1980s.

A title and the big chair hasn't changed the way Mr. Goodbread does business -- he still personally takes care of all dealings, even if it is to change cars on a policy.

"That's unusual for all these companies with reps. I want to know what's going on. I never mail a bill. I always hand them the bill," Mr. Goodbread said. "I have some clients that kid me, so I try to come by when I don't have a bill."

Insurance is more about selling the relationship than the product.

"Dave is customer-oriented," Mr. Blanchard said. "He builds great relationships."

Mr. Goodbread works Saturdays and Sundays, when the phone is quiet. That gives him time to plan the week ahead and oversee 20 employees.

Insurance Services is an independent agency with the capability of using 20 companies. Most of the policies are homeowners or auto, but some are workers' compensation insurance.

"We fare better during recessions than the good times, it seems, because we're so conservative," Mr. Goodbread said.

Family time

Mr. Goodbread was born in the desert of New Mexico during the Korean War.

His father, James, was a photographer in the Army and had spent some time in Korea with Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Mr. Goodbread didn't spend much time in his birth home, Albuquerque. From age 1 to 4, his family lived in France.

"He was attached to NATO," he said of his father. "We lived in Bordeaux for three years. I don't remember any of it. My brother spoke fluent French."

In 1955, the family moved back to the United States and settled at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.

It was there that he became a Cleveland Indians fan.

"When I was a kid, they came through El Paso to play some exhibition games," Mr. Goodbread said. They had finished spring training in Arizona and barnstormed their way back to Cleveland.

Mr. Goodbread's fandom centered on outfielder Rocky Colavito.

In Mr. Goodbread's freshman year in high school, his father was assigned to Fort Gordon and the family moved to Harlem.

After a few more overseas stints, with his family remaining in the Augusta area, James Goodbread retired from the Army. He already had been working part time for M&M Motors and started his own used-car lot, Lakeside Motors, on Gordon Highway.

David Goodbread played a lot of baseball until age 21.

"Good enough to play, but not good enough to go anywhere," he said. "I pitched ... not real well."

He got his fill of the nation's pastime in Little League and summer ball.

"All my life I had to put up with coaches," he said. "They would see how tall I was -- I was real skinny then -- and they thought they could make me a great basketball player. I was like an unruly stork running down the court."

He was too busy working to play high school baseball.

"Dad was an Army sergeant. My junior and senior year, he was overseas, so if I wanted a car, if I wanted clothes, I had to work," Mr. Goodbread said. "I was so big when I was 15, I told them I was 16 and they believed me, so I started selling hamburgers for 85 cents an hour."

The place was called Kelly's Hamburgers. It was like a McDonald's, he said. Burgers, fries and a Coke for 36 cents. "I did that five nights a week and all day on Sunday."

His fast-food days ended when he went to college at Augusta College -- "Harvard on the Hill," as he calls it. He was an English major.

"Instead of becoming a writer, I became an underwriter," he said.

Business decisions

Mr. Goodbread worked for Southgate Bank while in college.

"The bank was sold to another bank in town and one of the board members liked me and got me in with First of Georgia Insurance Co. here in Augusta," he said.

He was a gofer at first, running the mail, and then he took on some part-time underwriting duties.

"It was a basic company, did a lot of houses. There isn't a lot to underwriting," he said. "You look at a picture to see if there was a problem. That was a long time ago, when a $30,000 house was really something."

He took a jaunt to Atlanta to get a writer's job. Everyone wanted to be in advertising in the early 1970s, but he noticed that his insurance underwriting job was earning him twice the pay as the advertising jobs.

"I stayed with insurance. I don't like insurance, but I like the people in it," he said.

Mr. Blanchard hired him into Insurance Services in 1974. By 1990, Mr. Goodbread was a partner in the firm. It was a turning-point year.

"I was about to turn 40, and I decided that if I ever was going to do it on my own, it was time to do it," Mr. Goodbread explained.

Mr. Blanchard was the boss, having taken over from Berry McIntyre, who had retired. Mr. Goodbread went to Mr. Blanchard to say that he was looking for options.

"That's like telling your wife that you want a divorce and you'll get back to her," he said of the split.

"There were a lot of hurt feelings. Dick was probably my best friend before we split. We didn't speak for 15 years," Mr. Goodbread said.

It wasn't anger. Mr. Blanchard was upset that Mr. Goodbread wanted to leave. Mr. Goodbread was upset that the environment inside the firm had changed to the point that he wanted to try business on his own.

The firm had a new spot on Walton Way. Mr. Goodbread said he would intentionally avoid that section of the street so he wouldn't see the building in the location he had picked for it.

Mr. Goodbread bought a firm in Thomson called Rutkowski & Rutkowski. One of the sons wanted to stay in business with Mr. Goodbread. He renamed it First Insurance.

"Goodbread and Rutkowski in a Southern town didn't cut it," he said.

It was a fearful time. Mr. Goodbread realized that he had left a successful agency to go out on his own with the possibility of "falling flat on my face." Some accounts followed him to his new firm, though.

He had gone to Thomson to honor a noncompete agreement. He wasn't going to have an insurance agency within 25 miles of Insurance Services.

"I had a lot of friends tell me that you didn't have to honor it, they weren't enforceable. But my daddy said, if you signed it, then you've got to live up to it," Mr. Goodbread said.

Two years later, First Insurance moved to Augusta, setting up shop for a year in the Lamar Building downtown.

"I had a huge Cleveland Indian flag hanging out my window in the Lamar Building," he recalled. It got some attention from people walking below, none of it favorable.

First Insurance then moved to the corner of Washington and Pleasant Home roads, where it stood for 13 years.

"I was fat and happy. I thought I was going to work my accounts and retire," Mr. Goodbread said.

This summer, he got an unexpected call.

Back home

When Mr. Blanchard and Mr. Goodbread bought out Mr. McIntyre 18 years ago, the plan was for Mr. Goodbread to eventually buy out Mr. Blanchard. Being 10 years younger, Mr. Goodbread was going to buy out Mr. Blanchard on his retirement and run the company.

"I was a little shocked in the summer when he called and asked if I'd be interested in talking to him," Mr. Goodbread said.

Although he joked about getting socked in the head, the meeting produced a hug instead. It was the first time Mr. Goodbread had set foot in the office in years, "but it felt like home."

When Mr. Blanchard leaves next month, the firm's owners will be employees F.P. Meehan, Rusty Palmer and Mr. Goodbread.

"We just want to secure his retirement, that was the plan all along," Mr. Goodbread said.

First Insurance merged with Insurance Services, and Mr. Goodbread's two employees came with him to his new job.

"It was the people that drew me back," he said.

Mr. Blanchard said his old friend is still a good fit for the firm. He had the same business philosophy that was already embedded with the employees.

Mr. Goodbread said his honoring the noncompete agreement might have had some bearing when Mr. Blanchard needed someone he could trust to run the business.

Mr. Goodbread said he's at least 10 years from retiring, though he believes he'll work until he drops.

Hot rod

A sure way to get Mr. Goodbread's attention is present him with a 1960s or 1970s muscle car.

He has been buying and selling -- and driving -- old cars as a hobby for most of his adulthood. He attributes it to his father's running the used-car lot.

"I guess it is in my blood," Mr. Goodbread said.

He isn't into the restoration part so much as the playing with cars part.

"I'm trying to get where I don't have that much restoration," he said. "That part is so expensive, and it is hard to get your money back. It is better to buy one that somebody else has done."

Mr. Goodbread said he has never lost money selling a car he has grown weary of owning.

"Most of them end up with friends or clients," Mr. Goodbread said. "I bought my brother two Studebakers."

He has a preference for off-beat cars, such as the Plymouth Valiant, but the car he drives to work is a Chevrolet Corvette.

"I've got one that my wife doesn't know about. It is in a storage building," Mr. Goodbread said.

Twice a year, he can be found in Charlotte, N.C., for a vintage car sale.

"It sounds like I'm a car dealer, but I'm not. I just keep one or two to play with," he said. "Stuff that I saw when I was a kid."

Mr. Goodbread said he has purchased 15 cars on eBay over the years, all good experiences except one. A Mercury Cougar he bought without seeing first had some rust problems. He thinks it might become the first car he loses money selling.

His favorite is one he doesn't own anymore. The 1968 American Motors AMX was so fast that the front wheels would come off the ground, he said.

"It used to scare my daughter to death," Mr. Goodbread said. "It was a Javelin that they cut inches out of. They only made them for three years. It had a 390-cubic-(inch) motor. It was my favorite because it was so different."

He has been on one blind date in his life. That's how he met his wife, Debbie, more than 20 years ago.

"If you could put together a picture of the perfect woman for me, she was sitting there," he said.

They had lunch around Thanksgiving, became engaged on Valentine's Day and married that June. He has a 27-year-old stepdaughter, Stephanie, and a 21-year-old daughter, Anna.

"My daddy had a saying: We all get what we settle for," Mr. Goodbread said. "I tell my kids don't settle. Make sure you get to where you want to be before you quit pushing."

Reach Tim Rausch at (706) 823-3352 or timothy.rausch@augustachronicle.com.