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[Steve Smith]

Eric/Roger -

I appreciate your personal anecdotes re:LANB.   I think it was a shining 
star in it's own way.  I have known people who worked there over the 
decades and have known a few of the families of the principles including 
a couple who acted as personal assistant/caretakers for the Cowan's in 
their last years.   I am acutely impressed with George's (and other 
peers) role in the establishment and maintenance of the institution over 
the decades.   Most of my other anecdotal experiences are less 
one-sided, but it is the nature of small town pettiness/politics/gossip 
as much as anything in particular.

It *was* in many ways a "no brainer" to have a payroll the size of 
LASL/LANL on deposit and a captive audience of the bulk of the employees 
and local businesses as customers, so it isn't surprising that they 
thrived.  They held 4 different mortgages over my decades and they did 
well by them, though they did sell 2 of them (as was the agreement) to a 
third party which was at least moderately inconvenient (lapses/overlaps 
in direct-deposit payments, escrows etc) but it all worked out.   I know 
of people (re: EricS experiences) who received impressive personal 
treatment... my daughter worked in the Mortgage dept for several years 
and holds a number of great positive anecdotes from that era.

When some trust-busting rules came along (maybe it was when UC lost the 
contract?) LANB no longer held the contract's payroll and it seems like 
it was soon after (<6 years) that the parent company took a large 
outside investment which I *think* was the prelude to a full sale to 
Enterprise Bank and Trust.

Meanwhile Del Norte (formerly Los Alamos) Credit Union and Zia Credit 
Union and a couple of other trades CUs (Schools, ???) bop along as 
second class players to the big banks (LANB/Enterprise included).   
There are two major bank branches (buildings) evident in Los Alamos, 
though I couldn't name them).   Credit Unions are now offering 
Mortgages, they did not last time I took one out (16 years ago).

- Steve


On 11/17/22 10:46 AM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> On Nov 17, 2022, at 12:23 PM, Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:
>>
>> The old Los Alamos National Bank, LANB, was founded by a LANL 
>> scientist as an antidote to big-bank homogenization.  There are still 
>> hints of that origin in 
>> https://www.linkedin.com/company/los-alamos-national-bank/, but LANB 
>> sold itself out to a big bank several years ago.
>
> Yeah, btw, that really sucked.
>
> I got to know LANB when I had first moved to Los Alamos, was getting 
> around only on foot, and was there sitting on their curb on a morning 
> before work waiting for them to open.
>
> Some guy in a suit came by and asked if he could help me, and I said 
> something snotty and completely uncalled-for about bankers working 
> bankers hours.  So he let me in and started the opening of an account 
> for me.  That was Bill Enloe.
>
> A few years later I needed a mortgage loan for a house, had just lost 
> something like 100k in two days on a Pharma that didn’t get a good 
> outcome on a clinical trial, which I had wanted to have for 
> collateral, and could not sell a house in Austin that I was in because 
> I had a renter who had just lost his job in the market downturn, and I 
> wasn’t willing to throw him out, even as the house lost about 1k in 
> market value per week as the whole market there was falling apart too. 
>  Then got Salmonella or something from an egg sandwich in the ABQ 
> airport flying back from somewhere (Austin?) to make the loan.  People 
> who knew me said they had never seen anyone as white as I apparently 
> was for several days after the first 24 hours of violent illness.  I 
> went to the loan officer’s office, and after about a minute sitting 
> there talking to her, asked if I could lie on my back on her floor 
> while we spoke so I wouldn’t pass out.  Finished the loan negotiations 
> in that form.  When my realtor asked to look through the various 
> papers as part of negotiating the closure, he commented “man, you got 
> a really good loan”.  I will protect the loan officer's name for her 
> own privacy, but remember it instantly in any context.
>
> In the decades after that, I spent increasing time with George Cowan 
> at work and sometimes off-line, and got to learn a little more about 
> the history of that effort, along with some of his others.  What an 
> extraordinary guy he was, and it showed in the things he built.  He 
> richly deserved the Baldridge award, and much more.
>
> The bank that acquired them does not have that kind of history, I think.
>
> Those kinds of proud relations have always been rare, and they seem to 
> be damned near extinct any more.
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
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