Banker’s Honor

With Lehman Brothers imploding on Monday, and the market spiraling downward, my friend Deborah Lawrence Botham e-mailed to say she’d enjoyed my post on greed.  In the course of that e-mail she wrote a couple of lines about her late father.  It was so touching that I asked her to write more.  I just have the feeling that if there were more Robert Lawrences running things, we might be on more sound financial footing.       My dad was a banker. He was an honorable man, with a love for just-plain folks, and a sense of decency and honesty that is no longer common in the business he chose as a young man. Were he alive today, he would be appalled. Not only with the insatiable greed of lending institutions, but the rampant lack of common sense that pervades them would sadden and disgust him.  His story is a simple as the wisdom he shared with his family and his friends.  Born Robert Eugene Lawrence in 1921, he returned from Saipan after World War II and took a position at the First National Bank of Landisville. In the heart of Amish and Mennonite farmland in southeastern Pennsylvania,  it was as small-town as it sounds. Dad looked upon his job as a service to the people he assisted with their routine financial matters. His concern was that no one ever ended up in a position that jeopardized the well-being of his or her family. When he became manager of that bank soon after, he had simple rules when it came to mortgage lending:  A mortgage could not exceed 25 percent of the breadwinner’s take home pay, and they needed to have the standard 30 percent down payment.  There was some flexibility to his rules — he’d grown up in the town and knew when a potential borrower was a "good risk."   He often went to bat for folks who didn’t look good on paper but had a work ethic that would knock your socks off. During his years in Landisville, l can’t remember anyone defaulting on a mortgage. But his work was a tremendous embarrassment to me in the 1960′s, when we’d have knock-down drag-out arguments over the "profitability" of lending institutions. I was foolish and self-righteous; I had all the answers. His take on it was always, "Deb, people trust us with their money, that we’ll be able to pay interest and loan them enough to buy a new car when they need one, and we have to provide salaries and benefits to our employees." He loved people and loved to help them. I can’t tell you how many people came to his memorial service from that tiny little town. The First National Bank of Landisville eventually merged with a larger bank in Lancaster County, and that one merged with a yet-larger institution. Dad was offered promotions along the way but always recommended someone else for the job. Until he passed away in 1991, he chose to work directly with customers. At his death, his yearly salary was under $35,000. I write this for two reasons. The first is to honor a man whose life lined up with what he taught me. My memories include much time spent together. He’d go back to work after dinner (we lived just a block from the bank), and I’d always get to go along. I’d take all my pennies and run them through the change counter, over and over again. It seems a bit silly now, but I treasured those evenings. The second is to remember a way of doing business that valued the individual and personal relationships while still maintaining profitability.  It all seems a bit of a cliché now — as a child of the ’60s who’s now pushing 60, I wonder if I’m falling into the trap of remembering things in a too rosy light. Still, as I watched the news footage of the Lehman employees walking out onto the sidewalk, I wonder if what seems a simplistic view of life might not be something to lean into once more.