"...any good thing...that I can do..."

While attending the ABA Security and Risk Management Conference in San Diego last month, I sat in on several sessions on Disaster Recovery. Two of the speakers covered major catastrophes from a couple of years back-the California earthquake, and the South Carolina hurricane.

One of the responses each of them stressed was the actions and reactions of the banking employees. Stories abounded of people who were on their way home from work in California when the quake struck, who turned around and went back to their posts on the job-some of them not leaving for home again for three or four days. And others who loaded cash into cars and set up impromptu "branches", cashing checks up to $100 even for non-customers who had no other banking source, so that people could buy food. From South Carolina came stories of people who formed collection centers in the banking offices and distributed food and clothing to the homeless and needy. Some carpooled and drove 100 miles to work overtime to cover for fellow employees who were now homeless or in distress-giving them time off to get their lives back together.

I think the thing that impressed me the most about the audience listening to these stories-experienced bankers who have been in the industry for years-was that no one expressed any surprise that bank employees had reacted in this manner. We are used to working with people who care.

After spending over fifteen years in the banking industry, I know that bankers are very special people...and I've been saying so for years. They're like a very large family, with bankers from Washington and Oregon sharing similar problems and successes with bankers from Illinois, Maine, Kansas and Florida. Walk into a financial institution anywhere in the United States and you feel "at home." You know there are friendly people there-you're one of them! This is a difficult thing to understand for those outside our industry. And also for those who enter the banking world in positions of authority, who have never had the privilege and advantage of being included in this "family" before taking over part of it.How much harder for us these days to know the pain of so many of our friends who are now losing their positions in the banking industry. Next to the automobile industry, bankers are the second most "unemployed" people in this country today.

Call it what you will, "networking", "contacts", or just plain "helping hand", we are all doing what we can to help our fellow bankers, even while trying to protect ourselves. And will continue to do so until these trying times are over.

Until then, be glad you belong to an industry whose unofficial motto seems to be "...any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now..."

Copyright © 1992 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 2, No. 11, 2/92