FCS Financial: One Hundred Years July 2016 | Page 64

After a few years Donna Patterson moved to the St. Joseph
Production Credit Association office where she worked in the
accounting department, depositing millions of dollars every day from
the surrounding branch offices. “Within a few years,” Donna said,
“we got a computer and then instead of sending those receipts and
disbursements in to Louisville, I was the one who was keying them
in.” By around 1986, computers came on the scene and the branch
offices could now record their own receipts and disbursements.
Though the computers proved to be time-savers, they weren’t always
well received. Like most people, Joyce Borgmeyer didn’t know a
thing about computers at first, including how to turn them on. Her
manager, Gary Wrye, treated them with the utmost skepticism.
“We’d heard about computers—we just never had seen one,” he said.
“They carried that first computer into the office and it was huge. It
had wires everywhere and I looked at that guy and I said, ‘Sir, that
is an appliance from hell and as far as I’m concerned you can take it
with you when you leave.’ We looked at that thing for two days . . .
never turned it on. And then we had a meeting and we decided, this
is change; it’s gonna’ be different but it’ll be okay. And we flipped the
switch. And I’m glad we did, ‘cause it worked out real nice.”

Gary Wrye and Joyce
Borgmeyer retired together
in 2015 after more than
eighty years of combined
service. They left the Mexico
office arm in arm on their
last day.

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Selected References