One man’s journey into banking
In 1962, 44-year-old Brownsville native Bill Griffith faced a choice. Six months earlier, he had given up his Ford dealership due to health problems. Now with his health restored, he was anxious to re-enter the work force. His previous jobs had ranged from working at Hagan’s to operating a service station to owning Studebaker and Ford dealerships. All had one thing in common – they required salesmanship. After considering selling insurance or real estate, Bill decided he would not be comfortable in either occupation. Then, he reached a decision. “I made up my mind to get into the banking business,” Bill said.
“Banking?” I echoed. “How did you get a foot in the door in the banking business?”
“I went to see Matt Powers in Fredericktown. He had bought the First National Bank in Brownsville from an independent group that had operated it since it opened. I said to him, ‘Matt, I don’t know a thing about banking, but I do know business, and I’m willing to learn.’ “He said to me, ‘Bill, I think I could use you. Could you start in two weeks?’ I said yes.
“That night Matt called me back and said, ‘Could you start in one week?’ and again, I told him yes.
“The next day, he called a third time and said, ‘Could you start Friday?'”
Bill laughed as he remembered the sequence. “So, I started right away. I didn’t even ask what he was going to pay me, and he didn’t tell me, because I figured it was immaterial. If I didn’t fit in, he was going to fire me, and if I didn’t like it, I was going to quit. So it didn’t make any difference.”
“Did Matt Powers’s bank have more than one office?” I asked.
“At that time, his bank was still called the First National Bank of Fredericktown, and he had offices in Fredericktown, Clarksville, and Marianna. Then they bought the Brownsville bank, and later they opened a branch in Washington. At that point they felt it would be advisable to change the bank’s name to First National Bank of Washington.”
“So you started your banking career in the Brownsville office of the First National Bank of Fredericktown?”
“That’s right. Many of my customers from the Ford garage came down and did business with me, and that built the Brownsville branch up real fast. For the first few months, my title was assistant cashier, then they made me assistant vice president. When they opened the Washington branch, Powers called me and said, ‘Grif, we want you to come over here. We’re going to build a new head office, and we want you to be in charge of building it and getting it started. An architect has been chosen, and the redevelopment authority has allocated us some ground in Washington. You meet with him and put a situation together that is satisfactory. If you have any problems, you call me in Florida!’
“He was gone the next day!” Bill laughed. “I was on my own.”
Establishing new bank offices became Bill Griffith’s specialty, and he was eventually promoted to senior vice president.
“My program,” Bill said, “was to supervise all of the offices. I would buy different little small banks and merge them into ours. When I started at the bank, it consisted of the Fredericktown office and those few branch offices and was worth $13 million. When I retired in 1983, it was worth about $350 million.”
“Were you involved in opening First National’s Uniontown office?” I asked.
“Yes, I was. One day Mr. Powers called me into his office and said, ‘Grif, you say we need a bank in Uniontown. Go ahead up there and put one together.’
“So I came up to Uniontown, got options on property, set up the type of bank I wanted, saw the architect, and we built a branch of the First National Bank of Washington. The building we built is still there today, although it is now occupied by a different bank. First National eventually sold out to Union Bank, then Union Bank sold out to a group that included Gallatin Bank.
“Since they already had a head office in Uniontown, they had to divest themselves of the bank that we built. They sold it to Huntington Bank of West Virginia, and Huntington later closed it. Just a few weeks ago, the building re-opened as the Smithfield State Bank.”
“Has the banking business changed significantly since you retired in 1983?”
“Definitely, and not for the benefit of the customers, I’m afraid. Big banks have bought out most of the small banks, and they don’t seem to take into account the individual customer as much any more. Nowadays banks gain much of their earnings by imposing various service charges, which isn’t good for the customer, plus I don’t think you have the personal contact to the same degree that you once did.
“When I was working at the bank,” Bill continued, “I could set up a mortgage, have it run through a committee in a few days, and the customer could soon be buying a house. Now it often takes 30 or more days, partly due to government regulations and partly due to individual bank regulations. The process can even drag on for two or three months before a man can finally buy a house.”
“Most people do prefer the familiarity of a small town business,” I said, “where they may know the owner of the business personally.”
“It is a better situation for the customer,” Bill agreed emphatically, “and eventually, it will go back to that. You mind what I tell you.”
“Do you really think so?” I asked.
“If I were younger,” Bill said with a smile, “I would start another bank in this town and see to it.”
What is the secret to building a successful community bank? In Bill Griffith’s opinion, the secret is to realize that a successful bank is built, not on the accounts of a few wealthy depositors, but rather by earning the trust of hundreds of ordinary residents who do business at the bank.
“Banking is still a neighborhood proposition,” Bill explained. “I operated on the premise that your best borrower was a home owner, and I tried to impress upon our managers that they should cultivate that type of customer.
“If a man had his mortgage at your bank plus a small savings and checking account there, when he needed a new appliance or automobile he would come in to borrow that money, and that is what made your bank. If you tried to build a business on the hope that enough people would come into the bank carrying the Wall Street Journal under their arms and planning to arrange a $10,000 loan, you were not going to get enough of those customers to make a success of the bank.”
In the past three decades, computers have dramatically changed the way banks do business.
“When I started in the early 1960s,” Bill said, “if there was any shortage at all and the bank didn’t balance, we would work for hours after closing time, even if the bank was just 26 cents short. By the time I retired in the 1980s and computers were in use, that had all changed. If there was a $300 shortage, they would say, ‘Oh, it’s in the computer. It’ll come up the next day.'”
Another technological advance was the automatic teller machine. Bill was honest about his opinion of these popular devices.
“The thing that I never thought would grow,” he admitted, “and that I never recommended, was having these teller machines on the outside of a bank. I felt that rather than installing a teller machine for at least $50,000, for a little more money I could build a new satellite office, staff it with two tellers, make loans out of it and offer complete service, all for $90,000. In those years I built six little satellite banks, because I felt we got a better bang for the buck and provided more services for the customer.
“I’m not saying those machines aren’t useful,” Bill continued. “After all, my wife uses them all the time. But I’m boneheaded, and I won’t.”
“Well,” I said, “I often use the automatic teller machine to withdraw cash from my bank account. But I don’t deposit money into the teller machine.”
“Now that’s exactly my point.” exclaimed Bill.
“From a banker’s viewpoint, I wonder about that extra expense for the bank, and whether the machines actually discourage a full banking relationship with the customer. Of course, banks make money by charging fees to use them, but I don’t think that is in the customer’s interest.”
In recent months, public confidence in the integrity of accounting methods used at American corporations has been shaken by questionable practices at Enron and Arthur Andersen. With thousands of employees at those companies now facing the loss of their jobs and their pensions, Bill Griffth’s final thoughts about his years in banking ring very true.
“I always felt,” Bill said, “that when you were loaning money, you weren’t loaning your own money or the bank’s money. You were loaning other people’s money. All of your friends and neighbors brought in $100 or $200 and put it into their accounts, and you had a moral obligation to protect that.
“And you tried to do it the best you could.”
Don’t you wish all of America’s corporate leaders operated that way? For 84 years Bill Griffith has followed that credo successfully in business and in life.
It is a simple philosophy that he learned as a child. It is called the Golden Rule.
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Comments about Glenn Tunney’s weekly articles may be sent to Mark O’Keefe (Managing Editor – Day), 8 – 18 East Church Street, Uniontown, Pa. or e-mail mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com . Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201, glenatun@hhs.net or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, Pa., 15442.