Hamilton, who is serving as national spokesperson for Life Insurance Awareness Month, spoke to employees at MassMutual’s Springfield headquarters and its Enfield, Conn., campus, sharing his personal experience of losing his mother at a young age and overcoming a life-threatening illness to illustrate the importance of financially preparing for the unexpected.

“Losing my mother and fighting my own battle with cancer taught me that unexpected events can rock your family at any time,” Hamilton said. “When my mom died, the emotional challenges that my family and I faced were compounded by financial struggles because she didn't have any life insurance. Because of that experience, I've owned life insurance since I was a young adult. Now that I'm married and have a son who's almost three, I value the financial security life insurance provides more than ever.”

Hamilton was only 19 when he lost his mother to cancer. On a personal level, he took the loss very hard but his mother's death also strained the family's finances. Without his mother's income, there wasn't enough money to continue to pay for his training. Had it not been for the generosity of an anonymous donor, Hamilton would have given up the sport he loved right before his skating career was about to take off.

As it turned out, the experience strengthened his resolve to achieve skating greatness and he went on to become one of the most successful skaters in the history of the sport, eventually winning gold at the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Thirteen years later, Hamilton achieved an even more important victory when he successfully completed treatments for testicular cancer. Now, as spokesperson for Life Insurance Awareness Month, Hamilton is encouraging Americans not to “skate on thin ice” with their family’s finances by not having adequate life insurance coverage.

MassMutual, which is reinforcing its commitment as a mutual life insurance company, is one of many companies and industry trade groups that are participating in Life Insurance Awareness Month, which was established and is coordinated by the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education (LIFE), a non-profit organization.

MassMutual has a number of activities lined up for the month designed to raise life insurance awareness among customers, employees, and financial representatives, including advertisements in national publications, articles in both print and online media for employees and field representatives, and audio programs for its weekly podcast for field representatives.