FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 62

management tool) started in 1980 at the little branch office in
Mound City, Missouri, fifty miles north of St. Joseph. She, too, typed
up loan papers, took payments, and wrote checks out by hand. Cards
were kept on which the amount of money a member had in their
line of credit was recorded. With each transaction, the cards were
mailed to Louisville where they were processed and new cards sent
back to the branch offices. Joyce Borgmeyer started in the Mexico
Production Credit Association office in 1969 and spent a great deal
of her workday with these vital cards. “Every day we sent the cards
in (to Louisville) and in about two days we’d get a new batch of cards
that had all the transactions recorded on them. On those cards I
had to mark that they’d made a payment or picked up money and
when the new cards came in, I had to check them to be sure that the
balance was correct. Once a month, if we had an interest rate change,
I would get a huge batch with everyone’s cards.” Gary Wrye, who
managed the Mexico office and retired, along with Joyce, in March of
2015, recalled well the seriousness of these cards. “You learned very
early on in your career,” Gary said with a grin, “you don’t mess with
Joyce’s box of cards.”
The handwritten process wasn’t limited to the offices’ support
staff. When Gary Wrye first started in the Mexico office, his mentor,
Don Kuester, handed him a pad of mortgage notes. “What am
I supposed to do with those?” Gary asked. Don replied, “You’re
supposed to go out and make some loans!” “So,” said Gary, “I did. The
notes were all hand written. The applications were all hand written;
the financial statements were scratched on a piece of paper or balance
sheet form and signed. It
was all done by hand. And
if we had to go to the field,
we just took our little pad
of notes and peeled one off
and filled it out.”
A Production Credit
Association employee shows
a borrower the new receipt
form used under the new Loan
Information System, 1982.

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Selected References