Guest Post 4
October 8, 1994, 2:00P.M
Shaker Heights, Ohio
THE Letter
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.
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