Vernon L. Fonk (June 5, 1955 – May 22, 2006) was a
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
entrepreneur best known for founding Vern Fonk Insurance, a
high-risk auto insurance
Vehicle insurance (also known as car insurance, motor insurance, or auto insurance) is insurance for automobile, cars, trucks, motorcycles, and other road vehicles. Its primary use is to provide financial protection against physical damage or bod ...
agency with seventeen offices, servicing
Washington
Washington commonly refers to:
* Washington (state), United States
* Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States
** A metonym for the federal government of the United States
** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...
,
Oregon
Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...
and
Idaho
Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...
.
Vern Fonk Insurance is well known in the Pacific Northwest region for its humorous and off-color
television commercial
A television advertisement (also called a television commercial, TV commercial, commercial, spot, television spot, TV spot, advert, television advert, TV advert, television ad, TV ad or simply an ad) is a span of television programming produce ...
s, which generally appear on local late-night television and have run since 1994.
After Fonk's retirement in 1995, Vern Fonk Insurance was owned by his son-in-law and daughter, Kevin and Rene Mulvaney, until they sold the business in 2010 to New York-based
Confie
Confie is an American private insurance company that provides auto insurance, home insurance, life insurance, commercial insurance, and related products. Confie is the ninth largest independent property and casualty insurance agency in the Unite ...
Seguros as part of that company's plans to become the first nationwide insurance distribution company primarily dedicated to Hispanic consumers.
Death
Vernon died at Stevens Hospital in
Edmonds, Washington
Edmonds is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located in the southwest corner of the county, facing Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located no ...
, of a bacterial blood infection in 2006.
Legacy
Vern Fonk Insurance television commercials, which typically parody movies and TV shows as well as other
Northwest
The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sep ...
personalities, were usually written by and starred Rob Thielke, manager of the Fonk agency office in
Everett. Due to Thielke's prominence in the ads, he was commonly believed to be Fonk himself. The company's slogan, “Remember to honk when you drive by Vern Fonk,” ends each commercial. KCPQ, a FOX television affiliate in Seattle, put together a collection of Vern Fonk
bumper
Bumper or Bumpers may refer to:
People
* Betty Bumpers (1925-2018), American activist, First Lady of Arkansas, wife of Dale Bumpers
* Dale Bumpers (1925–2016), American politician, governor of Arkansas and senator
* Bumper Robinson (born 197 ...
s for ''
JOEtv
KZJO (channel 22) is a television station in Seattle, Washington, United States, broadcasting the MyNetworkTV programming service. It is owned and operated by Fox Television Stations alongside Tacoma-licensed Fox outlet KCPQ (channel 13). Bot ...
''.
Thielke died August 16, 2015, after a long battle with cancer.
References
External links
Vern Fonk InsuranceVern Fonk commercialsVern Fonk Vision, ''JOEtv'' bumpers
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fonk, Vern
1930 births
2006 deaths
Deaths from sepsis