Single location houses Peck's two businesses

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by Laura Scott|ret||ret||tab|

SBJ Contributing Writer|ret||ret||tab|

sbj@sbj.net|ret||ret||tab|

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In 1953, when Bill Peck started his life and health insurance business in Clinton, his current business partners who also are his children hadn't even been born. |ret||ret||tab|

In 1954, Peck moved his company, Peck's Insurance and Financial Services, to Springfield. As he worked to rebuild his clientele in a city where few people knew him, Peck found that he needed an answering service to meet his growing firm. Thus a second company, Professional Answering Service, was opened in 1962. |ret||ret||tab|

Professional Answering Service started with the old switchboard-type equipment and now takes calls using a computer. "Once we had a switchboard and an operator taking one call at a time," said Bill Peck. "As we became computerized, we're able to take multiple calls and get messages out by phone, cell phone, pager and e-mail." In the early days, an operator might be working from her bedroom at home. |ret||ret||tab|

But Professional Answering Service has grown, and in 2003, 1.2 million calls were answered.|ret||ret||tab|

Daughter Leslie joined Peck's Insurance and Financial in 1980 and son David joined Professional Answering Service in 1991. But before joining their dad in his ventures, both tried their wings in other professions.|ret||ret||tab|

"I was with Camp Fire Girls four years right after college. There was not much room to grow there," said Leslie Peck. "I looked at this business to decide if it was what I wanted. It took a few years to decide that."|ret||ret||tab|

David worked at J.C. Penney in Little Rock and rather than be transferred farther from home, he decided to return to Springfield and work with the answering service business. "It gave me an opportunity to come home and have the grandkids closer to the family," he said.|ret||ret||tab|

Bill Peck learned about owning a business from his father, who had a newspaper in Kansas. "The Depression got that," he said. "Then he opened a Buick and Pontiac place in Clinton. I worked there when I was in college."|ret||ret||tab|

Peck's Insurance and Professional Answering Service share a building at 3861 S. Jefferson, which enables the three Pecks to work closely together. |ret||ret||tab|

"For a long time we weren't in the same location. It's nice to have it this way," said Bill. "We can share resources, personnel and equipment, and it's beneficial for everybody." Leslie has one employee while David employs around 37 people.|ret||ret||tab|

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