Sunday, July 12, 2020

A Writer's Journey: THE Letter by T.W. Harvey



Guest Post 4

October 8, 1994, 2:00P.M

Shaker Heights, Ohio

THE Letter

T.W. Harvey, Author

    Wow, it is hard to believe that a year has passed by but work with banks has kept coming in, albeit slowly, but there was a major interruption of my investigation of what story the letters told. All I knew was that they were written by my father’s relatives, and that he was the grandson of Thomas S. Armstrong.

    Based on my book, Quality Value Banking: Effective Management Systems that Increase Earnings, Lower Costs, and Provide Competitive Customer Service, a fellow by the name of Jim Davidson of Irwin Professional Publishing had called and invited me to Chicago to discuss a new book. So, I figured why not? I had time between engagements, now that I was consulting with the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the 4th District, if you will, so we spent an afternoon in November, 1993, talking about what they wanted.

    Banking was undergoing a technological transition, and they wanted me to come up with a strategy to help banks navigate through the regulatory changes that were forcing new business models, but still under the watchful eye of the Fed.

    Now, I had been in banking from 1977 through 1991 and had seen the changes in the industry and had also become acquainted with the Total Quality Management movement (TQM) advanced by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. TQM basically rested on the idea that if organization could understand their customers’ expectations and exceed them with quality service, they would keep those customers and attract new ones, thus increasing revenue and decreasing costs. Jim and his team loved it and offered me a contract, with a nice advance, on a new book.

    Back in Cleveland, I started working on The Banking Revolution: Positioning Your Bank in the New Financial Services Marketplace. But, that has limited my consulting activity, but there has been another interruption.

    A month or so ago, on Labor Day weekend, my brother, Steve, and his wife, Barbara, were in town from their home in Manhattan Beach, west of Los Angeles, right on the Pacific. A whole bunch of folks were going to the cottage in Rock Creek that weekend, but, along with my folks’ friends, George and Ginny Bodwell, and their daughter, Paula, we arrived on Saturday afternoon. Nobody else would be there until the next day. The Bodwells couldn’t stay to see the rest of the guests on Sunday, so it was just us and them for the rest of the day.  When the parents decided to play bridge, Barbara, Steve, Paula, and I jumped into the Cutlass to find something better to do. I drove over to the quaint little town of Ashtabula Harbor, right on Lake Erie, where we walked around and got an ice cream cone. It was then that I told them about the letters, and they all seemed really interested.

    To make a long story short, I waited two weeks before I screwed up the courage to call her and finally did. We talked about the letters and agreed to grab a burger and a beverage at our favorite watering hole with some friends. That went well, and we thought that we would like to see each other again. So, last Saturday, the 1st, which turned out to be very cold and wet, we drove out to Rock Creek, having lunch at my favorite diner in Jefferson, Ohio, not too far to the east of the cottage.

    When we got to the cottage and went in, I lit a small fire in the fireplace and pulled the crates out from under the table where they had been for a year. Even with all the activity of the summer, guests of my parents out there every weekend and me and my friends taking over for Memorial Day and the 4th of July, nobody had said a word about the boxes under the main serving table up again the wall on the west side of the great room.

    Opening one of the crates, I knew I would have to get it secured again since the clambake was scheduled for next Saturday, October 15, but we decided to look at the documents. I was thumbing through some of them, becoming even more curious than I had been before. Just then, Paula let out a gasp.

    “You better come see this,” she said, looking a little shaky. I put down what I was reading and walked over to her. She handed me a letter, the second paragraph of which follows…

April 20, 1865

The city was crowded with persons, thousands of them from distant cities, nearly

the whole population were out. Every prominent point on Pennsylvania Avenue

the line of procession was occupied by those who wished to obtain the best view.

You will see a description of the whole affair. It was the most extensive affair I ever

saw. I was at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln. But one thing I regret is I never

saw him. We returned on the train last evening. The bells were ringing in Annapolis

when we got here.

          Thomas S. Armstrong


      I said something a little inappropriate for a first real date, and I was almost shaking. My great-grandfather had been at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln.

    We put the letter back in the crate, sealed it, and took it and the other one back to my new condo in Shaker Heights. As I drove, I thought, “You know, there just might be a book in those crates.”


About Dr. Harvey

Dr. T.W. Harvey is a retired Associate Professor of Finance at Ashland (Ohio) University. He has published two books, Quality Value Banking: Effective Management Systems that Increase Earnings, Lower Costs, and Provide Competitive Customer Service, with Janet L. Gray, and The Banking Revolution: Positioning Your Bank in The New Financial Services Marketplace. Further, he had articles published in both practitioner and academic journals.

Dr. Harvey has always been fascinated by the history of the United States and was grateful to have the opportunity to study it in detail while researching and writing Seeing the Elephant: One Man’s Return to the Horrors of the Civil War.

He was born and raised in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He graduated from Hillsdale College with a BA in English, from Case Western Reserve University with an MBA in Finance, from Cleveland State University with a doctorate in management and strategy. He and his wife, Paula, reside in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

https://twharvey.net/


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